A Homage to the Carrot! The artistic legacy of a humble vegetable

Carrots and propaganda — not two words which instinctively go together. However, after Anne Haworth's lecture to the Horsham Arts Society in November — A Homage to the Carrot! The artistic legacy of a humble vegetable — we had to change our minds. Starting with the most recent example (from the Second World War, when a campaign promoting carrots to help see in the dark was used to mask the development of radar), Anne took us back to a time when this root vegetable wasn't just the orange colour we see today, but also yellow and purple. With examples, most from 16th and 17th century Spanish and Netherlandish art, she examined a genre of paintings which in their time conveyed a comforting sense for the ruling elite that they lived in a harmonious world, a land of plenty, where people lived their lives in happiness. The recently conserved and uncovered face of the woman in the painting The Vegetable Seller at Audley End would seem to indicate otherwise.