Summer: Harvest Scene (designed c. 1535, woven mid- to late 1600s): Art, History and Details

Summer: Harvest Scene (designed c. 1535, woven mid- to late 1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gobelins Manufactory (France, Paris, est. 1662).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The wheat harvest took place in July and represented the hard, hot work of summer. The reaper in the foreground and his companion in the middle distance swing their scythes high above their heads as they prepare to cut the wheat stalks. Underneath the shade of an apple tree, three figures in the foreground are determining a price for the wheat. A woman gestures to the coins that the seated man is counting. Behind them another man holds an account book, in which he records their decisions. His pen holder and ink pot hang from his belt. In the distance to the right, two horses draw a cart piled high with wheat toward four farmers who gather bunches of wheat stalks together and tie them into bundles.

Object facts

• Title: Summer: Harvest Scene
• Date: designed c. 1535, woven mid- to late 1600s
• Creator attribution: Gobelins Manufactory (France, Paris, est. 1662)
• Culture: France
• Type: Tapestry
• Technique: Wool, silk, and gold filé: tapestry weave
• Dimensions: Overall: 254 x 255 cm (100 x 100 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1952.544.2

A detail from the museum

Images of the harvest provided a way to express pride in the fruitfulness and plenty of a particular region and celebrate the diligence of the field laborers.

Collection credit

Gift of Francis Ginn, Marian Ginn Jones, Barbara Ginn Griesinger, and Alexander Ginn in memory of Frank Hadley Ginn and Cornelia Root Ginn

Further reading listed by the museum

• Scaturro, Jane and Hanson, Robin. “Cycles of Life: Celebrating the four seasons.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 62, no. 1: 18-21.
• Warwick House, Ltd, and Lucas. The Balloch Castle Seasons of Lucas; Being Four Gobelin Tapestries Rich with Gold, 8 Feet 2 Inches High, with Combined Width of 41 Feet 7 Inches, from Balloch Castle, Near Glasgow, Where They Hung for Nearly Two Centuries; a Companion Set to the Famous Months of Lucas, and by the Same Designer. Baltimore: N.T.A. Munder & Co., printers, 1918.
• Hunter, George Leland. "The Loan Exhibition of Tapestries." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 5, no. 8/9 (October-November 1918): 63-87.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.