The Hay Cart

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Hospitality, Lancaster House

A much larger painting by Francis Wheatley, titled 'The Harvest Wagon', in the collection of Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, shows a similar group of farm labourers travelling on a horse-drawn cart along a country lane.

Francis Wheatley was born in London. He studied at Shipley’s Academy before enrolling at the Royal Academy Schools in 1769. He made a number of trips aboard during the 1760s and became influenced by contemporary French painting, particularly the work of Jean-Baptiste Greuze and François Boucher. Wheatley was elected a Fellow of the Society of Artists in 1770 and became a director in 1774. In 1779, he fled to Dublin with the wife of another artist to escape creditors. Having established himself in Ireland, he returned to London in 1783 and produced work for the print publisher John Boydell. His images of itinerant merchants of the early 1790s were published for English and French markets. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1791.

Places

Subjects

harvesting, pitchfork, rake, farmer/farm labourer, cart, genre, tree, horse, man, woman, 18th century costume, dress, shirt, waistcoat, trousers, bottle, field, hedgerow, haystack, farm

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Francis Wheatley (1747 - 1801)

Title

The Hay Cart

Date

1779

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 100.50 cm, width: 127.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the Leger Galleries, May 1957

Inscription

bl: F. Wheatley F 1779 [indistinct]

Provenance

Maskelyne Collection; with F. T. Sabin; by whom sold through Christie's, London, on 6 February 1953 (Lot 139), for £273.0.0; from which sale purchased by with Leger Galleries, London; from whom purchased by the Ministry of Works in May 1957

GAC number

3802