The Faggot Gatherers. Edgar Barclay (1842-1913) 1901. Oil on canvas, 365/8 x 611/4 inches (93 x 155.6 cm). Private collection. Click on image to enlarge it.
This painting, which is not really an Etruscan School composition, was more influenced by the Idyllist school. The picture shows two young women gathering a bundle of firewood with the kneeling girl being startled by a running deer. The women’s labour is treated in an idealized decorative manner far different than if it had been used to highlight the plight of the poor in social realist depictions of faggot gatherers, such as in the work of an artist like Alphonse Legros.
The dress, including aprons and shawls as well as the tams worn by the young women, indicates this is a British and not an Italian subject. Tams became fashionable for young women at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. — Dennis T. Lanigan
Last modified 20 December 2022