We Gather Together: American Artists and the Harvest

The mutual history of art, agriculture, and American identity as told through the theme of the harvest. The harvest has traditionally been a productive season, both on American farms and in its artists’ studios. Before the early nineteenth century, the ideal of the Jeffersonian yeoman, singly cultivating a subsistence plot for family use, dominated the American imagination; after World War II, the advent of big agribusiness proved less immediately attractive for artists. In We Gather Together, Charles C. Eldredge examines the period in between—when many Americans were farmers and much of America was farmland. By Charles C. Eldredge Hardcover: 328 pages