William Kurelek’s best-known works are his depictions of western Canadian farm life. Informed variously by morality, communal memory and personal experience, and drawing from the formal constructions and dense allegories of Northern Renaissance painters such as Hieronymus Bosch and Peter Breugel the Elder, Kurelek produced images of rural life that are immediate and recognizable. Among his most affecting works, the vast, open landscapes of the Prairies serve as a foil for the often lonesome figure of the immigrant farmer trying to make his way. Sweeping horizons and broad plains are punctuated by thin ribbons of fencing and meagre farmhouses, while the hardscrabble labours of farm life promise spiritual fulfillment within an indifferent natural world.

Beehives is a lush example of Kurelek’s formal and narrative practice. Beekeeping was a part of the agricultural development of the Prairies from the beginning of the twentieth century, and—certainly compared to the demands of field work—was an effective way to produce food with minimal effort and impact to the local environment. Here, an apiary dominates the bottom half of the image, a geometric line of beehives sitting alongside a finely rendered thicket of greenery. The further fields are painted in softer greens, leading up to copses of trees and a low, pale sky. Small birds flit across the scene—waiting for the bees to return?—while in the distance we see a herd of cows and the diminutive farmer; in a wide-brimmed hat over a white hood, long grey cloak and high boots, he is at once a beekeeper and a medieval traveler. For Kurelek, the ambivalent beauty of nature serves as a foundation for the hardships of his isolated figures, universal and timeless subjects that manage to find a certain harmony with their environment.