The Harvest Moon, 'globed in mellow splendour'

This glowing watercolour dates from the early years of the artist's marriage to William Allingham, a poet whose verse she quotes in the title. The figure of the reaper stands monumentally against the landscape in which he has been working and as he walks home he glances back at the rising moon. In Allingham's later work the figures tend to be less dominant in the composition but here the large central figure perhaps shows the influence of Frederick Walker (1840-1875), an example of whose work is included in the present sale as lot 120.

Allingham exhibited a similar watercolour, showing a group of young reapers heading homeward entitled Harvest Moon, at the Society of Painters in Watercolours in 1879 (no. 169).