Autumn or The Grape Harvest

Francisco Goya

Contemporary-Art.org
Keywords: AutumnGrapeHarvest

Work Overview

The Grape Harvest or Autumn
Spanish: La vendimia o El Otoño
Artist Francisco Goya
Year 1786
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 267.5 cm × 190.5 cm (105.3 in × 75.0 in)
Style   Romanticism
Genre   genre painting
Location Museo del Prado, Madrid


The Grape Harvest or Autumn (Spanish: La vendimia o El Otoño) is a 1786 oil on canvas painting by Francisco Goya which depicts a man in autumn-colored clothes with his wife and son. A peasant is presenting them with a sample of the year’s grape harvest.[1] The piece has been held by the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1870.


Dressed in yellow clothes that symbolize autumn, a young man sitting on a stone offers a cluster of black grapes to a lady. A boy is eager to reach the offered fruit, which is reserved for the adults. A woman stands next to them, holding a grape basket on her head, much like the classical allegory of the goddess Ceres with fruit on her head. Some grape harvesters are behind them, next to the grapevine that leads to a valley crowned with the suggestion of mountains in the background. Here, following Western painting´s traditional iconography, the grape harvest is an allegory of autumn. This is one of the most beautiful and best-known compositions from all of Goya´s cartoon series. It´s pyramidal structure, and the figures that recall ancient statuary, define the artist´s study of the classical artistic tradition. This cartoon was for one of the tapestries intended for the Prince of Asturias´ dining room at the El Pardo Palace.