Little information is available in my library or on-line about Albert Bitterlich at this point (2017). He was born in Austria in 1871 and died in 1960. If anyone can add to his biography please contact the gallery.
This skillfull drypoint is of a farming family, harvesting sheaves of grain, hoisting the sheaves with a pitchfork up on a wagon, drawn by a team of horses. The woman stands by with a pitcher of much needed water and the child keeps the horses from pitching the farmer from the wagon.
Bitterlich used an almost beige, wheat-colored paper for this work and creates a sense of the time of the day by contrasting the color of the paper with dense, black drypoint lines. The artist has signed his name in the plate in the lower left and added an additional pencil signature to indicate that he approved this impression.