Jean-François Millet, 1857, Oil On Canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
When I first saw The Gleaners I was struck by its size, as it measures approximately three feet by three-and-a-half feet. The three monumental women in the foreground drew me in. They are fully absorbed in their work of picking up the bits of grain that remain after a field has been harvested.
The Gleaners depicts peasant women gleaning wheat for themselves at sunset when only stray stalks are left to gather. The artist, Jean-François Millet, portrayed these workers in a very real and sympathetic light, communicating through his oil painting the exhausting work poor agricultural laborers had to do to survive in mid-1800s France. He took what his society at the time considered the lowest ranks in rural life and elevated them through art to a status equal to the middle and upper classes. Feeling threatened by this, the prosperous classes in France did not appreciate Millet’s painting when he unveiled it.
Millet was, in fact, an integral part of the Realism art movement, where the focus was on portraying scenes truthfully. Having grown up on a farm, he neither romanticized country life nor hid it from view. He knew firsthand what it meant to be an integral part of a farming community working the fields. In The Gleaners, Millet aptly portrays an everyday scene of people struggling to survive. Gleaning was a practice landowners allowed the poor to do once their rich harvests had been collected. High society may have looked down on gleaning, but Millet brought out the dignity of the gleaners and the life-and-death seriousness of their work.
In the painting the colors of the field and sky are soft and muted, although there is a golden hue that re-flects the sacredness of the land. The abundant harvest can be seen in the background, along with a field supervisor on horseback and laborers standing around. The gleaners, however, ignore the bounty in the distance. Their attention is fully upon the task of gleaning, since without the grain that they gather it will be challenging for them to survive the upcoming winter.
These workers emanate genuineness. They’re not distracted by the piles of grain or the activities of the farm-hands. Engrossed in the backbreaking work of locating and gathering meager leftovers, the three women keep close to each other in their solitary work yet remain removed from the rest of the scene.
By placing them in the foreground, making them large and substantial, Millet has tipped the scales, turning the gleaners that society preferred to ignore into the focus of attention. While their work clothes are dusty, colorful accents help them stand out.
Millet’s painting was received poorly when it debuted. People did not like having poverty stare back at them in art salons. Eventually sentiment changed, and by the late 1800s The Gleaners began to cultivate recognition and appreciation.
Have you ever had to do work that others looked down upon or did not appreciate? Perhaps one of the lessons of Millet’s painting is that there is no shame in doing what we must to survive. All work matters. Dignity and nobility exist in all walks of life, and we can be proud of the work we do regardless of what others may think. After all, they don’t walk in our shoes.