Robert Walker Macbeth, R.A.

The Potato Harvest in the Fens is a reduced version of Macbeth's Royal Academy exhibit of 1877, which was much admired by the critics. The Art Journal had 'emphatic praise' for it, and F.G. Stephens wrote in the Athenaeum 'The spirit and variety of Mr R.W. Macbeth's The Potato Harvest in the Fens are unquestionable; ... it has a good design, expressed compactly and ably in a first-rate composition, and wants but something of chiaroscuro, of colour, and light and shade to gain immensely as a picture. The style is vigorous, the painting strong.' Henry Blackburn was also complimentary in his Academy Notes. He thought it 'a fitting pendant to A Lincolnshire Gang, exhibited last year. Women and children at work is the subject again; the time is late afternoon, and the baskets are being filled with the potatoes ploughed up in the furrows. There is a windy sky and a rain cloud, not indicated in the sketch. The aim is elevated, and the treatment classical.'

Robert Walker Macbeth came from an artistic family; his father was a well-known portrait painter, his niece Ann Macbeth and two of his five brothers were also artists. Macbeth first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1873 and he was celebrated for his fresh and original treatment of landscapes. Many of his subjects were found in Somerset or Lincolnshire. Perhaps influenced by his work at The Graphic many of his compositions, like the present work, have a mesmering rhythm and animation.