A Grecian Harvest-Home, or Thanksgiving to the Rural Deities, Ceres, Bacchus, etc.

Barry imagines an agrarian society modeled on Virgil’s Georgics, with Greek maidens and youths dancing at a harvest festival and a society that is in "a state of happiness, simplicity and fecundity." Details such as the wrestlers at left hint that competition will stimulate civilization to advance, even as it threatens the idyllic harmony. The etching comes from a series based on canvases Barry painted between 1777 and 1782 to adorn the Great Room of the Society of Arts in London. Three of six trace the rise of Greek civilization, including Orpheus Instructing a Savage People (on view nearby). Barry published this image in 1792 to disseminate his imagery to a wider audience.

Credit: A. Hyatt Mayor Purchase Fund, Marjorie Phelps Starr Bequest, 2014