Jean-Francois Millet
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Jean-Francois Millet was well-known for his paintings of the peasants and the rural landscape. His interest in creating rural imagery stemmed from his childhood memories of his rural life in Normandy. Thus, Millet possessed a personal and intimate knowledge of the way of life and points of view of the peasants. Millet was also likely to have been inspired by his arrival at the rural community of Barbizon that was replete with images of the peasants and rural activity. Combined with the memories of his childhood, Millet's life in Barbizon further cemented his interest in the rural themes and provided him with the inspiration to develop his style of portraying the rural landscapes (Laughton 76, 78; Eiland, Pelletier and Phagan). Furthermore, his attraction to the harsh lives of the gleaners--the most impoverished peasants whose livelihoods depended on salvaging the leftover grains on the groundůsuited his pessimistic conception of the challenging nature of life (Hedberg 16). Millet's initial interest in the rural images certainly deepened as he began to learn more about the social and economic difficulties of the impoverished peasants he was portraying. The socio-economic upheavals of his times that affected the rural community with the establishment of large-scale commercialized enterprises magnified the hardships of the peasants. Many of the peasants who became unemployed were the focus of Millet's paintings. Even though Millet did not intend to make a social stat
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position of the painting (Herbert and Lehman 13). Her position draws attention to the master's wagons that are weighed down with the piles of grains located in the background of the painting, near the horizon line (Herbert and Lehman 14). At the same time, by locking her head in that position, Millet illuminated the overseer who watches over her in the far right corner of the painting (Herbert 86). Essentially, this composition of the painting draws attention to the differences among the lives of the gleaners, the harvesters and the absentee landowners whose presence is only represented by the piles of grains. In addition, by pushing the images of the large group of harvesters and the wagons far into the background, Millet reinforced the isolation of the gleaners from the rest of the harvesters. Essentially, these gleaners are not able to share in the bountiful harvests of the other peasants (Hedberg 18). This painting thus portrays accurately and powerfully the marginalization of the gleaners to the periphery of the rural community.
The Angelus
The Angelus consists of a male and female figure arrested in the poses of piety as the bell of the church, depicted in the distance, tolls. The tiny church tower drawn in the
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2246
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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