The Pumpkin Harvest

Humanity’s relationship to nature is a core theme in the paintings of Giovanni Segantini. This late picture represents a bucolic pumpkin harvest overwhelmed by the excessive steam (and blaring sound, no doubt) of a passing train. A frightened child holds onto her mother for protection in the foreground, as if the field is under assault. Their rural way of life has been overtaken by the rapid transformations wrought by the Industrial Revolution.