Artwork Title: The Potato Harvest

The Potato Harvest, 1918

Winifred Knights

The Potato Harvest (1918) shows a frieze of male and female workers in social and economic harmony on the land. The distant fields have been flattened into a patchwork quilt of contrasting colours, out of which rise strong verticals of haycocks and ladders. The workers – modelled by Knights and her cousins – are all wearing robust rural dress of the kind advocated by Aunt Millicent’s friend, Edward Carpenter, as a way of resisting the endless consumerist churn of factory-produced fashion. Knights adopted this part-peasant, part-bohemian rig for the rest of her life, self-aware enough to know that it suited her lithe body and Modigliani facial features to perfection. (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jun/25/how-painter-winifred-knights-became-britains-unknown-genius)
Uploaded on Aug 21, 2016 by Suzan Hamer

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