Hop Gatherers circa 1845
by Peter Ogden
Title
Hop Gatherers circa 1845
Artist
Peter Ogden
Medium
Digital Art - Oil On Canvas
Description
This is a restored copy of Hop Gatherers, a circa 1845 oil on canvas by William Frederick Witherington depicting an English peasant family gathering hops from the vines on the hop bine poles.
William Frederick Witherington was an English painter and academic. Born in London, he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1805. Except for one year he exhibited annually at the Royal Academy from 1811 until his death. He was elected A.R.A. on 1 November 1830 and R.A. on 10 February 1840.
The need for massed labor at harvest time meant hop-growing had a big social impact. Around the world, the labor-intensive harvesting work involved large numbers of migrant workers who would travel for the annual hop harvest. Whole families would participate and live in hoppers' huts, with even the smallest children helping in the fields. The final chapters of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage and a large part of George Orwell's A Clergyman's Daughter contain a vivid description of London families participating in this annual hops harvest. In England, many of those picking hops in Kent were from eastern areas of London. This provided a break from urban conditions that was spent in the countryside. People also came from Birmingham and other Midlands cities to pick hops in the Malvern area of Worcestershire. Some photographs have been preserved.
The often-appalling living conditions endured by hop pickers during the harvest became a matter of scandal across Kent and other hop-growing counties. Eventually, the Rev. John Young Stratton, Rector of Ditton, Kent, began to gather support for reform, resulting in 1866 in the formation of the Society for the Employment and Improved Lodging of Hop Pickers. The hop-pickers were given very basic accommodation, with very poor sanitation. This led to the spread of infectious diseases and led to contaminated water. The 1897 Maidstone typhoid epidemic was partly as a result of hop-pickers camping near the Farleigh Springs which supplied Maidstone with water.In the United States, Prohibition had a serious adverse effect on hops production, but remnants of this significant industry in the western states are still noticeable in the form of old hop kilns that survive throughout Sonoma County, California, among others. Florian Dauenhauer, of Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, became a manufacturer of hop-harvesting machines in 1940, in part because of the hop industry's importance to the county. This mechanization helped destroy the local industry by enabling large-scale mechanized production, which moved to larger farms in other areas.
Hops are the flowers of the hop plant Humulus lupulus, a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to which, in addition to bitterness, they impart floral, fruity, or citrus flavours and aromas.
The Fine Art America watermark logo does not appear on the final product.
Uploaded
May 2nd, 2023
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