True to one of Millet's favourite subjects - peasant life - this painting is the culmination of ten years of research on the gleaners.These women incarnate the rural working-class. They were authorised to go quickly through the fields at sunset to pick up , one by one , the ears of corn missed by the harvesters. The painter shows three of them in the foreground , bent double , their eyes raking the ground. He thus juxtaposes the three phases of the back-breaking repetitive movement imposed by this thankless task : bending over , picking up the ears of corn and straightening up again .
1 comment:
I do like Millet ,this kind of work still goes on ,such a good depiction of heat and fatigue,capturing the stalwart attitude of the workers .
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