Abbeville Museum Mural – Abbeville LA

Description

This mural “The Harvest” was originally painted for the what was then the Abbeville post office by Louis Raynaud in 1939. Presently, it hangs in the Abbeville Museum downtown.

“The Harvest shows men and women harvesting cotton, sugarcane, and muskrat hides.  Men gather cotton and tend the cane.  A couple prepares hides for drying.  Two male children do what children have always done when they were not pressed into premature labor to support mill families or sit for younger siblings-they hang around.  A man prepares to cut a clump of cane, and one woman waits, holding a bucket of water for the workers.  In the center position, a young woman bends to gather an armful of felled cane, one of the hardest tasks in the cane field.  The scene is what one would imagine is usual among southern rural laborers who earn a living on their own land.  Whole families are involved in the labor, and women and men work together at whatever needs to be done to ensure a successful harvest. (from: Depression Post Office Murals and Southern Culture by Sue Bridwell Beckham)” (Abbeville Museum)