The Gleaners
1857 Musée d'Orsay
About this artwork
This iconic oil painting depicts three peasant women gathering leftover stalks of wheat after the harvest. It is a masterpiece of 19th-century French art known for its somber palette and monumental scale given to the laboring class.
Did you know?
When first exhibited in Paris, this painting caused a public outcry because the French middle class feared it might incite social unrest by highlighting the poverty of the rural working class. Millet's focus on the 'lowest' members of the agricultural hierarchy served as a radical departure from the romanticized, idyllic depictions of country life common at the time.
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The Gleaners
Jean-François Millet, 1857
