dc.description | The following description is from 'The Great Room Paintings The Progress of Human Knowledge & Culture by James Barry' which is an abridged version of 'An Account of a series of pictures in the Great Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce at the Adelphi' written in 1783 by James Barry. "In the foreground are young men and women, dancing around a double terminal figure of Sylvanus and Pan,just behind them are two oxen with a load of corn, and a threshing-floor. On one side [right] is just comingthe father of the feast and his aged wife, in the other corner [left] is a basket of melons, carrots and cabbage,with rakes, and a plough, and a group of inferior rustics drinking. In the top of the picture [left], Ceres, Baccus,Pan &c are looking down with benignity and satisfaction on the innocent festivity of their happy votaries;behind them is a limb of the zodiac, with the signs of Leo, Virgo and Libra, which mark this season of the year.In the distance is a farm-house, binding corn, bees &c., male and female employments, courtship, marriage, anda number of little children everywhere. In short, I have endeavoured to introduce whatever could best pointout a state of happiness, simplicity and fecundity, in which, though not attended with much eclat, yet, perhaps the duty we owe to God, to our neighbour, and ourselves, is much better attended to in this, than in anyother stage of our progress; and it is but a stage at which we cannot stop, as I have endeavoured to exemplify by the group of contending figures in the middle distance, where there are men wrestling. One of the lookers-on has a discus under his arm [left], and on the other side, the aged men are sitting and lying along, discoursing and enjoying the view of those sports, in which they can no longer mix; and which (as we are informed by theancients) give rise to those wise and admirable national institutions, the Olympian, Isthmian and Nemeangames of the Grecians, which make the subjects of the next picture." -- www.rsa.org.uk | en |