Haymaking; a very small view of a worldwide artistic subject
- Year On the Field Project
- Sep 25
- 6 min read
If you are a fan of landscape art, you may have noticed that hay has a prominent position in art history across many countries and genres. Not only hayfields, but calm scenes of country people quietly cutting or stacking hay, loading it into their wagons, or resting after cutting or loading. It’s all pretty idyllic: a country scene, peaceful workers, sometimes without a city or even a town in sight; or if they are in sight, the landscape is peaceful, harmonious, and pleasant,
As this subject has been featured across centuries, continents and countries, it would be impossible to write a short blog post which covers all the artists, paintings, engravings, woodcuts, locations, dimensions, and eras. But this article will give you the opportunity to think about how hay has been represented in cultures and across time. What are these impressions? What are the images saying, and when have viewers been receiving these messages across the decades?
Is haymaking a genre art? Genre paintings, often considered a ‘slice of life’ view, are often considered generalized, idealized, and can be moralistic, (as explained by the Wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre_art) these scenes certainly gives the viewer a sense that haymaking is fun and worthy of idealization. In some paintings, the farm workers wear nice clothes and have peaceful, meditative or happy expressions on their faces.
This author disagrees with the artistic, peaceful expression on a face of a person making hay; as your author has discovered, haymaking involves long hours cutting, cocking, turning, loading hay for multiple hours a day, many days in a week, possibly for a few weeks a year, usually in the hottest and driest of days of the year. As the saying goes, “Make hay while the sun shines” (source), meaning: ‘dry, warm, sunny weather is needed to prepare the hay for the long winter, so work fast before any rain comes, or before the hay loses its nutritional value!’ Haymaking is a long process that takes heavy work - a hay worker may not normally smile during the long, arduous process especially in the hot June sun!
Getting back to the art of haymaking: idolized imagery asks the viewer to think outside the viewer’s current context to imagine a different, pleasant world of rolling hills, fresh growing grass, and happy, leisurely workers. There is even an entire genre of poetry focused on the pastoral. (Crandall, 2014, Alpers 1982). Ollie Douglas of the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, England says British haymaking scenes imagine an idyllic, often unrealistic world outside of modern day urban life. Alpers, 1982, mentions a quote from Kenneth Burke that pastoral [literature] is a “deflection of reality” yet the many works of art featuring pastures and haymaking seems to reflect the inherent “naturalness of the shepherd’s life and the unnaturalness” of urban and warring societies (Lindenberger,1972, p.337). The contrast of peaceful happy haymaking certainly gives an anti-reflection to those eras and regions struggling with war, filth from industrialization and urban crowding, and the many wars which featured the countrysides in England and Europe throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Haymaking, especially by well-dressed, happy pastoralists, creates “the middle landscape” between wilderness and the creeping urbanization (Segal, 1977, commenting on Leo Marx, 1964), or perhaps an ideal for which real life cannot reach (Cirillo, 1971), whether the underlying implied idealized subject is the ease of farming or the idyllic countryside life.
As another layer about haymaking in art: hay is studied by artists as typical of common life:
The 19th century Realist movement tried to elevate the labor of workers, farmers, and peasants to be “worthy of empathy and respect” (source https://www.teachercurator.com/19th-century-art/hay-making/)
Even in the 20th century, American artist Grant Wood understands that the farmer's life “is engaged in a constant conflict with natural forces,” (Wood, Grant: Revolt against the City, Iowa City, 1935, p.33), his modern painting “Haying”, ca.1939 still feel like the pastoral imagery of the 18th and 19th centuries before him. This farm scene ignores the Great Depression which enveloped the world during this era, lulling its viewers to see the rolling hay-raked fields as peaceful and sunny, without cares or refuse, or even age or decay. If one takes Wood’s comment about ‘constant conflict with natural forces’, this scene confidently shows no conflict with the land, weather, nature, or even the dark Depression hanging over the world’s economies. Hay again becomes a metaphor for order and pleasant living.
Even the famed French painter Claude Monet painted over 30 paintings of haystacks between 1880-1893. Details about the series are focused in a Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystacks_(Monet_series), which includes a quote from fellow artist Camille Pissarro capturing the essence of the hayfield scenes, “"These [hayfield] canvases breathe contentment."
About the author:
Lauren Muney is an artist, historical interpreter, and enthusiast of historical farming practices, especially sickles, scythes, and draft animals. Her artistic speciality is traditional handcut silhouette portraits,. She is also the creator of the Year On the Field logos, as well as helping imagine some of the original concepts for the project. She is based in the United States but travels throughout the globe to demonstrate silhouettes. Read more on her website at www.silhouettesbyhand.com and her Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/silhouettesbyhand/
References:
Alers, Paul. “What Is Pastoral?” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Spring, 1982), pp. 437-460 (24 pages), https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343259 (last accessed 29 August 2025)
Cirillo, Albert R. As You Like It: Pastoralism Gone Awry, ELH, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Mar., 1971), pp. 19-39 (21 pages). https://doi.org/10.2307/2872361 / https://www.jstor.org/stable/2872361 (last accessed 29 August 2025)
Crandall, Joshua. "THE GREAT MEASUR'D BY THE LESS:" THE ETHNOLOGICAL TURN IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PASTORAL, ELH, Vol. 81, No. 3 (FALL 2014), pp. 955-982 (28 pages) https://www.jstor.org/stable/24475612 (last accessed 29 August 2025)
Douglas, Ollie, curator, collections manager of the Museum of English Rural Life. https://merl.reading.ac.uk/, in-person interview 9 May 2025
Lindenberger, Herbert. “The Idyllic Moment: On Pastoral and Romanticism” College English, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Dec., 1972), pp. 335-351 (17 pages) https://doi.org/10.2307/375139, https://www.jstor.org/stable/375139 (last accessed 29 August 2025)
Mark, Leo. Reviewed Work: "Middle Landscape": A Critique, a Revision, and an Appreciation, Review by: Howard P. Segal Reviews in American History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 137-150 (14 pages) https://doi.org/10.2307/2701782 / https://www.jstor.org/stable/2701782 (last accessed 29 August 2025)
