A Stubbs and a Digression

The colours of the trees and the quality of light just now, as the greens of summer fade and autumn tints begin their takeover, puts me in minds of that great English painting, The Reapers by George Stubbs, which hangs in Tate Britain (digression: I didn't know that the Tate was originally called the National Gallery, Millbank – until the name was changed by a man generally reckoned the 'least successful' of all Tate directors, James Bolivar Manson, a frustrated painter and alcoholic, whose drunken excesses culminated in a 'scene' at a grand reception in Paris at which he 'punctuated the ceremony with cat-calls and cock-a-doodle-doos, and finally staggered to his feet, hurled obscene insults at the company in general and the minister in particular, and precipitated himself on the ambassadress, Lady Phipps, some say with amorous intent, others with lethal intent'. Digression ends.) 
Those who run what is now Tate Britain have burdened The Reapers with this deadening interpretative caption: 
'As a depiction of labour, this picture is greatly idealised. The workers are spotlessly clean despite their drudgery. The church in the distance, and the farm manager on the horse to the right, serve as reminders of spiritual and social authority. Stubbs's picture can be seen as a celebration of the order and nobility of rural life, in tune with the concern with efficiency shown by agricultural writers of the time like Arthur Young. Alternatively, you may think that his picture robs these workers of their individuality and denies the harsh realities of work for sentimental effect.'
Not only does this ignore all aesthetic, artistic or technical aspects of the painting, it also imposes on poor old Stubbs intentions that were surely not his: did he really have Arthur Young's agricultural reforms in mind then he painted it?  More likely, surely, that his mind was infused with vaguely remembered images of the classical pastoral, biblical scenes (Ruth amid the alien corn), and of course earlier paintings of the same subject. But never mind all that – at today's Tate, Marxism rules. What would James Bolivar Manson say? Cock-a-doodle-doo?