In spite of this imperfection the first Sower is a highly prized painting and is in the Quincy-Shaw Collection, Boston.
Compare also Victor Hugo's poem, often referred to in descriptions of this picture, Saison des Semailles: Le Soir.
XII
THE GLEANERS
It is harvest time on a large farm. The broad fields have been shorn of their golden grain, and men and women are still busy gathering it in. The binders have tied the wheat in sheaves with withes, the sheaves are piled upon a wagon and carried to a place near the farm buildings, where they are stacked in great mounds resembling enormous soup tureens. The overseer rides to and fro on his horse giving orders to the laborers.
Now come the gleaners into the field to claim the time-honored privilege of gathering up the scattered ears still lying on the ground. The custom dates back to very early times.[[1]] The ancient Hebrews had a strict religious law in regard to it: "When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger."[[2]] Another law says that the gleanings are "for the fatherless and for the widow; that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands."[[3]]