Meditating with George Robert Lewis (1782-1871)

At the beginning of the 19th century, harvesting wheat in the countryside was the business of an entire people. There they are, these men lining up facing a sea of ​​wheat, sickle in hand. The stems of this ancient and vigorous cereal reach almost to the upper body. Bending their backs, the harvesters take heavy sheaves loaded with grain which they roll up in a quick movement, before depositing them in imposing millstones behind them. Humble and fleeting steles which pay homage both to the fertility of the earth and to the work of men. The ink sketches of the painter and designer George Robert Lewis also participate, in their own way.

For several months, with one of his friends, John Linnell (1792-1882), a London landscape painter like him, he has traveled the hilly landscapes of North Wales to capture these scenes from life. By superimposing three rows of drawings on this page of his sketchbook, the painter almost creates a comic strip evoking the social life of this small world. The owners, with their wives and children, appear from the front, long sticks in their hands, arms crossed or in full conversation. The harvesters, for their part, have their backs for the most part, in a lowering and raising movement which passes, in waves, from one to the other. At the bottom, on the right, a woman, on her knees, is perhaps preparing the jugs of water that must be served regularly to the exhausted workers. Unless she’s looking after a young child?

It is from this rural world that the Gospel also drew its most beautiful parables and its strongest teachings. Recalling in passing that the wheat and the chaff will be mixed to the end (Mt 13) and that it will take all the know-how of wise harvesters to separate them, when the time is ripe.