Here’s a collection of people picking fruit. Most of the people picking fruit are women, a metaphorically gendered activity (if not an actual one?) Images of women picking fruit appeals to our fantasies of abundance and self-sufficiency. Many of these works are brightly coloured and cosy.
But then you get the odd inversion…
Man in apple tree is in danger of falling out, Michiel Mosijn, after Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne, 1640 – 1655
1914 Drawing of an Orchard, Paul Nash, UK
The pile of apples from “Old Mother Frost” or “Frau Holle”, collected by the Grimm Brothers.
‘The Lemon Gatherers’ (1910) Robert Kitson
Pietro Isnardi Olive Oil 1910s, Liguria, Italy
‘Blackberries.’ (1922) Harold Harvey
‘The Bean Harvest.’ Harry Becker, painted in The Netherlands around 1900
Emile Bernard Apple Pickers in Pont-Aven, 1888
Frederick Morgan – An Apple Gathering
Anne Anderson
Carl Olof Larsson apple picking
An advertising card, French, late nineteenth or early twentieth century
Woman’s World Magazine cover art October 1917
Woman’s World Magazine October 1916 cover art
Nelly Erichsen, (English painter of Danish heritage, 1862-1918)
Myles Birket Foster – Apple Harvest
William Stephen Coleman – Picking Apples 1880
Imitation of the painting above, illustrator unknown
Edward John Poynter (English, 1836-1919) The Golden Age 1875
Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (French painter 1841-1895) ‘Cueillette d’orange’
Cover art for October 1927 GOOD HOUSEKEEPING Magazine b Jessie Willcox Smith – a young girl picking grapes and putting them into a basket.
Salvatore Postiglione, Italian painter (1861-1906) Cherry
Cover art for Farmer’s Wife Magazine 1938. Is she picking grapes or trying on lipstick?
Apples (1912) [Cornwall] by Harold C. Harvey (English, 1874-1941)
Edmund Blair Leighton – September
Hartley’s marmalade – showcard design by Freda Beard for W P Hartley & Co. Ltd., c1925
Arkady Sher
The COUNTRY GENTLEMAN Magazine cover art for MAY 19 1923, girl picking cherries
Leopold the filth, Woman With Basket (1864-1940) Stříbro, República Checa
Gyo Fujikawa, 1976
Arthur Melville’s The Cabbage Garden 1878
Flora Macdonald Reid Scottish painter (1860-1938) The Potato Pickers
Flora Macdonald Reid Scottish painter (1860-1938) Field Workers
Norman Mills Price (1877 – 1951)
Frederick Walker (British, 1840 – 1875) Spring,1864
Harold Harvey (British,1874-1941) Summer 1917
A transitional figure between the Impressionists and the Fauves, Henri Lebasque
Header illustration: Cover of January 1938 The American Home Magazine – Vegetable Basket