A Grecian Harvest-Home, or Thanksgiving to the Rural Deities, Ceres, Bacchus, etc.

A Grecian Harvest-Home, or Thanksgiving to the Rural Deities, Ceres, Bacchus, etc.

James Barry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Barry imagines an agrarian society modeled on Virgil’s Georgics, with Greek maidens and youths dancing at a harvest festival and a society that is in "a state of happiness, simplicity and fecundity." Details such as the wrestlers at left hint that competition will stimulate civilization to advance, even as it threatens the idyllic harmony. The etching comes from a series based on canvases Barry painted between 1777 and 1782 to adorn the Great Room of the Society of Arts in London. Three of six trace the rise of Greek civilization, including Orpheus Instructing a Savage People (on view nearby). Barry published this image in 1792 to disseminate his imagery to a wider audience.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Grecian Harvest-Home, or Thanksgiving to the Rural Deities, Ceres, Bacchus, etc.A Grecian Harvest-Home, or Thanksgiving to the Rural Deities, Ceres, Bacchus, etc.A Grecian Harvest-Home, or Thanksgiving to the Rural Deities, Ceres, Bacchus, etc.A Grecian Harvest-Home, or Thanksgiving to the Rural Deities, Ceres, Bacchus, etc.A Grecian Harvest-Home, or Thanksgiving to the Rural Deities, Ceres, Bacchus, etc.

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.