The Reapers

Farming, Fields, Farming, Harvesting, Genre: Men, Landscape, Landscape, Figure

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 15.2 x 19.6 cm | published September 19, 1890 | issue No. 470
Support Dimensions: 20.5 x 28.7 cm

Editorial comments on this plate:

In the beginning of my career, as a disciple of Isaac Walton on several occasions I made-trips to streams in the Western part of the Catskill Mountains which were seldom visited except by lovers of the rod.
This section of country became so familiar to me, that, possessed of a camera, I had but to revisit my old haunts to be rewarded by sights of rural landscapes that would wake to enthusiasm any lover of pastoral scenes. On one of my trips I came upon the hillside here depicted.
The morning was bright but hazy and was a pleasing example of a luminous effect of mild diffused light under a thinly veiled sky. Two men were at work “cradling” oats near the crest of the hill.
I selected the spot which seemed to me the one combining the most advantages and hailed the men who by this time were curious to know “what was up.” They came down and cut for me a few swaths until the rather monotonous foreground was broken by the beautiful layers of grain on the ground.
They entered with so much vim into the spirit of the occasion that I had little difficulty after everything else was arranged in posing one as if sharpening his scythe and the other in the act of swinging his cradle in the tall grain.
I used a single combination lens. This I use both for landscape and portraits. For the former work my experience has led me to believe that they have many advantages not possessed by the double combination lens.
Including as they do a small angle they do not sweep over much territory; the picture on the ground glass is almost perfection in drawing, showing but little marginal distortion, and, when used at full opening, besides being very rapid, gives good definition and more correct interpretation of values than the double combination lens is capable of.

R. Eickemeyer, Jr.