Stories Pictures Tell. Book 5

by Flora L. Carpenter

In the background of the picture we see other women at the same task, and men busily piling the wheat from the wagon into high stacks. Farther back, and partly hidden behind the wheat stacks, we see several cottages which may be the homes of the peasants or barns in which to store the grain.

We should judge by the shadows that it is late in the afternoon and all are hurrying to finish their task. Our attention is held by the three stooping figures of the women gleaning or gathering the wheat. They have caught up the corners of their aprons and tied them in a tight knot at the back, making a sort of bag in which to place the broken heads of wheat, while their hands are filled with the stalks. The three women seem absorbed in their task. How very tiresome it would be to stoop in such a fashion for any length of time! No wonder the woman at the right straightens up for a moment to rest her back. The other two are stooping to pick up the grain. One of them holds her left hand behind her back. If you take this position yourself, you will understand how natural it is to balance yourself with the left arm as she does. The women’s caps are drawn so far down that we can see but little of their faces in the shadow. But the coarse clothes, bent backs, and hands roughened with toil represent the typical French peasant women of the artist’s time.

Millet tells us in a letter to a friend: “I want the people I represent to look as if they belonged to their station, and as if their imaginations could not conceive of their ever being anything else.” How truly he has accomplished this in our picture! The women seem to be working cheerfully without complaint or regret. They do not ask for sympathy but attend strictly to their work.

With so many other laborers in the field, and considering their task, we scarcely dare think of the miserably small pay they must receive for their labor. We wonder how they can live. And yet they have a certain wholesome, thrifty appearance—their clothes, although coarse, are not ragged; they look well and strong, and they work with an energy which would imply a certain satisfaction in their task well done.

There are no lingering looks toward the sun—their clock—or toward the distant homes, or even toward the other laborers whose tasks seem nearer completion. They are resigned. But even at best their life must be hard, and whether they ask it or not, they stir our sympathies even as they did those of the people of France when the picture was finally placed on exhibition in Paris.

The peasants of France were especially wretched after the French Revolution, and this picture appeared just at a time when people needed to be reminded of this condition of affairs. But many preferred not to be reminded, and they so resented Millet’s efforts to better the life of the French peasant that they were bitter against him for many years.

Millet was the son of a French peasant and worked out in the fields himself, so he knew all about the hardships, poverty, and wretchedness, and painted the truth as he saw it.

In the original painting there is a suggestion of red and blue in the dresses of the women, a blue-gray sky, and over it all the sun shining dimly. The coarse dresses of the women were no doubt woven by them during the winter days when there was no farm work to do.

Millet tells us that one of his earliest remembrances is of being wakened early in the morning by the hum of the spinning wheel and the voices of his mother and aunts as they spun the thread of flax ready to weave into cloth.

Notice the arrangement of the three women in the picture. They are not in a straight row, or one right behind the other, or even scattered about in the picture. Two are near each other, while the third is just a little to one side; in this way the center of interest is made more pleasing to the eye. If we make an outline sketch of these three figures we will be surprised at the number of curved lines it requires.