In the Fields. Spring

The horse has a calendar

The title names a season, and in an agricultural subject that is a statement about work rather than about weather. The farming year gave the draught animal distinct tasks in distinct months — the ground opened in one part of it, the crop moved in another — and a picture that puts a season in its title is telling the reader which part of that cycle it belongs to. This register sorts by function, and season is the finest-grained functional label a field subject can carry.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1820 as the date of creation and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow as the location. No dimensions are recorded; the field is empty and this entry does not fill it. Realism is the recorded style and Russian the nationality attached to the painter. The record files the work under landscape, rural and field headings together with Animal Art > Horse, and the measured colour family of the image is yellow.

What a field picture is evidence of

It is evidence of a way of composing agricultural labour for a viewer who was not doing it. Pictures of this class were made for buyers in towns, and they arrange work into something legible and unhurried. Nothing in the record identifies a farm, a district or a day, and this entry identifies none.