Harvest Tea
Mary Martin (b. St Dominic, Cornwall 1951)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1983
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2440 x 1220 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Cotehele, Cornwall
NT 348089
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Harvest Tea by Mary Martin (b.Cornwall 1951), 1983. An upright view of a picnic in a cornfield. Virginia Spiers, the artist's sister, sits, dressed in white wearing a straw hat in front of a picnic laid out on a white tablecloth, in the forground, pots are propped up on the edge of the cloth on the right and behind a cornfield stretches into the distance. Beyond is a path, on the left, on which a couple can be seen coming along.
Full description
This painting was commissioned by the late Michael Trinick, National Trust Director for Devon and Cornwall, early on in the artist's career. Trinick asked for it to be a 8ftx4ft harvest scene reminiscent of 'olden days', and to include food as it was to hang in Cotehele Barn Restaurant. Mary Martin's sister Virginia Spiers describes tthe painting: ‘Luckily there was a wonderful cornfield just up the lane from where we live that year and, as the weather was fine, settled and calm, I was able to help Mary carry out the easel and unusually large board and set it up every day while she was capturing the sun on the ripening corn and the large oak tree, with me dressed up in historic clothes from the late Mrs Breen whose husband was the last tenant of Cotehele's home farm. Later she painted authentic food, cider jugs and the kettle with an apple on the spout that we remembered from harvest teas that our mother took to the harvesters on Viverdon Down. The background with Calstock viaduct was superimposed and the man leading the horse was based on Mr Luckson from Ashton, who died many years before Mary became a painter but who was an important figure in our childhoods.’
Makers and roles
Mary Martin (b. St Dominic, Cornwall 1951), artist