英國農業主題風景畫中的收成季節

Images of the Harvest Season in English Agricultural Landscape 1780-1890

本文的目的在討論英國農事主題風景畫中，有關於表現七至九月的農事活動圖畫的美學與社會問題。藉著分析這類圖畫的製作與風景美學之關係，和它們對社會議題之反映，企圖了解這類圖畫在英國藝術社會史脈絡中的之意義。在美學的討論中，農事主題風景畫與十九世紀浪漫主義的風景美學，顯然有內涵上的差別，在繪畫作品風格上也有區分。農事主題固然以農田和牧野為背景，而有一定程度的「風景」份量，但它不必然被歸類為風景畫，而是以農事活動之內容為名；「收成」（harvest）「割曬牧草」（haymaking）等這一類的畫題，反而比通稱的風景畫更接近圖畫的內涵。英國畫家以農事活動為主題跨越精緻藝術到通俗藝術的範疇，顯示它的題材具有普遍性。七至九月向來是英國農業上的收成季節，也是文學、繪畫描述農事活動與農民經濟情況的季節。就本文以收割、拾穗和疊草等內容為主要範疇而言，選擇七、八、九月固然不能代表全部的農事主題，而它們正是繪畫表現中，美學的與社會的關切核心。

This essay examines the images of agricultural landscapes in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England, focusing on the related issues of English art from aesthetic and social historical points of view. It aims to understand the significance of this genre in the context of British art in that period. In regard to aesthetics, the idea of the agricultural landscape may not be in correspondence with nineteenth-century Romantic landscape in terms of what and how nature is represented. Agricultural landscape, ostensibly, uses landscape setting as a background to create and to enrich the narrative of a picture itself. However, it is not necessarily categorized as landscape painting in general terms. Working laborers and the agricultural processes engaged in, in the field, are, most often, taken as the caption of the picture such as 'harvest', 'haymaking' and 'reaping'. This caption in turn is regarded to be more serviceable in transmitting to their audiences about the meaning of the pictures. It is the period of the harvest season between July and September in England. In those days the amenities of the field and the joys of harvest had long been poets' and artists' beloved subjects. This essay does not take the harvest season for granted they are the only themes that can represent the whole realm of the agricultural subject. In this essay, however, the themes of agricultural landscape related to these months remain significant factor to be explored.