Jean-François Millet

Jean-François Millet's paintings describe rural people through the repeated actions of work and daily life. Figures bend, lift, carry, or pause within settings that make their relation to the land visible, with posture often supplying the main structure of a composition. The Gleaners concentrates on women gathering grain left after the harvest, using their bent bodies to organize the foreground against a more distant agricultural scene. The Winnower brought him public success at the Paris Salon of 1848 through another ordinary task, the separation of grain from chaff. From 1849 he worked chiefly at Barbizon, near the Forest of Fontainebleau, among artists concerned with landscape. His attention nevertheless remained strongly focused on the figure, connecting rural surroundings with the effort and rhythm of human activity. Carefully arranged forms give these daily actions a presence beyond a passing anecdote.