Paintings of fields of buckwheat (not a cereal at all), sainfoin (ideal for horses), flax (oil paints and linen), and clover. And how the Dutch Golden Age changed its agriculture.
Breton
Threshing cut cereal using flails, horses towing a roller, oxen trampling the corn, a sledge, a hand-cranked machine, and a large threshing machine. With Monet’s grainstacks.
Gleaning has Biblical origins, to let the poor get their own free supply of grain. Was it confined to the poorest, and did it remain a right, later in Europe?
Stone-picking to improve the soil. A series of paintings of the Sower, broadcasting seed by hand. Weeding the fields to help the crop grow.
An introduction to a new series tracing the history of the countryside in fine paintings. Explains why some English country lanes have so many twisting bends.
In landscapes by Rubens, Constable, Ford Madox Brown, Frederic Edwin Church, Millet, Pissarro, Breton, and Prendergast.
Its weather is often wild, with mountainous seas. Views of its rugged coast, seaweed harvesting, and religious pardons.
The sun is near the horizon, but is it dawn or dusk? How to tell them apart without trusting a title that may not be the artist’s.
From Rembrandt to the First World War, through specialists including Atkinson Grimshaw, Eugène Jansson, Schikaneder, and Le Sidaner.
Strictly the Eve of Saint the Baptist, it’s marked in the Nordic and other European countries with bonfires, feasting and dancing.
The Eclectic Light Company 