Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
The plough team
Ploughing is the oldest job in this part of the register and the one furthest from the saddle. A ploughing picture shows animals in harness, walking a line, doing sustained low-speed work under a driver on foot. There is no rider, no display and no contest. The title adds a season: spring ploughing is the work of a particular few weeks in the year, which makes this an agricultural calendar subject as much as an animal subject.
What the record holds
The catalogue gives 1916 as the date of creation and the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, as the location. The dimensions are 84 x 109 cm. Expressionism is the style term and Norwegian the nationality attached to the painter. Landscape and rural categories accompany Animal Art > Horse, and the measured colour family of the image is ochre.
The distance between a plough team and a court portrait
Both entries in this register show a horse and a man. In one the animal is raising a sitter above eye level for the purposes of rank; in the other it is pulling an implement through soil at a walking pace. Reading them as the same subject because both contain a horse is exactly the mistake this catalogue is arranged to prevent.
Sources
1 references- Munch, Edvard — Getty ULAN
Norwegian painter, printmaker, and draftsman, 1863-1944
