Bent Franklin Larsen (1882-1970), Onion Harvest, c. 1939, oil on canvas, 33 x 27 inches. Brigham Young University Museum of Art, 1941.
Two men, perhaps a father and son, work together to fill a sack with recently harvested onions. While the painting’s title directs us to the work of the harvest, most of the painting is occupied with a rhythmic celebration of the landscape, as the patchy tan, brown, and orange earth gives way to billowing trees and the proud towering mountains of the horizon. The harvest then is emphasized not only as the work of these men, but as a collaboration—a meeting of human and earthly energies.