DAY 45

A PICTURE’S WORTH 1000 200 WORDS

The Gleaners

JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET, 1857

Today, the word “gleaners” is only vaguely familiar to our ears. Perhaps we first heard it in the ancient love story of Ruth and Boaz. Since Biblical times, centuries before farmers had machinery to harvest their crops, workers reaped the fields with hand-held tools such as the scythe. As they hurried to gather the crops before rain or wind destroyed them, a scattering of wheat or barley was left behind. Traditionally, the local poor were invited to enter the fields after the harvest, gathering up or “gleaning” the remaining grain free of charge. Jean-François Millet’s painting captures a trio of peasant women in the midst of this yearly ritual.

Millet’s intention in painting this graceful scene has been closely considered. Some critics suggest that the work is a visual ode to the lower classes. At the time, France was less than a decade removed from a major social revolution, and many of the educated elite felt threatened by working classes who increasingly embraced the socialist messages of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Was Millet making a socio-political statement? Or, with sunlit fields as a golden backdrop, was the artist—the son of peasant farmers himself—simply celebrating the dance-like beauty of the gleaning women? —DDG