Thomson's The Seasons and its Illustrations : The Case of Lavinia the Gleaner

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate illustrations for editions of James Thomson's The Seasons [first compiled edition in 1730] published between 1770s and 1810s. This is because I believe that those illustrations reveal artists' interpretations of The Seasons in the age of Romanticism when the poem was widely accepted. We especially deal with illustrations engraved for the episode of Lavinia in 'Autumn'. She is a lovely woman gleaning in the field of a merciful farmer, Palemon. There are four major types of the illustrations of Lavinia. (1) Lavinia kneeling beside Palemon: They are in the field of Palemon who is asking her origin. (2) Lavinia standing beside Palemon: They are in the field of Palemon who is declaring his love for her. Lavinia is holding gleanings sometimes on her apron and lowering her eyes in embarrassment. (3) Lavinia standing beside her widow mother in front of a hovel: Lavinia is informing her mother about her engagement to Palemon. (4) Lavinia standing alone in the field: She is holding gleanings under her arm or putting them on her head. She sometimes has a scythe or a jug. An important fact about Lavinia's illustrations is that each type derives its visual source from the iconography of Ruth in the Book of Ruth. Ruth is also a female gleaner living with her widow mother. In the end she accepts the merciful marriage proposal of Boaz the farmer. The iconography of Ruth had been repeatedly pictorialized since the thirteenth century and distributed in large quantities especially through the media of prints. Not only did artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries adopt the iconography but they also introduced the merciful story of the Book of Ruth into their illustrations of Thomson's episode. In this respect, artists of the age of Romanticism associated the lines of The Seasons with the biblical story of mercy.