Editing Jean-François Millet (section)

===Barbizon===
In 1849, Millet painted ''Harvesters'', a commission for the state. In the Salon of that year, he exhibited ''Shepherdess Sitting at the Edge of the Forest'', a very small oil painting which marked a turning away from previous idealized pastoral subjects, in favor of a more realistic and personal approach.<ref>Murphy, p.23.</ref> In June of that year, he settled in [[Barbizon]] with Catherine and their children.

[[File:HarvestersRestingRuthBoazMillet.jpg|thumb|left|''Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz)'', [[Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]] (1850–1853)]]
In 1850, Millet entered into an arrangement with Sensier, who provided the artist with materials and money in return for drawings and paintings, while Millet simultaneously was free to continue selling work to other buyers as well.<ref>Murphy, p. xix.</ref> At that year's Salon, he exhibited ''Haymakers'' and ''The Sower'', his first major masterpiece and the earliest of the iconic trio of paintings that included ''The Gleaners'' and ''The Angelus''.<ref>Murphy, p.31.</ref>

From 1850 to 1853, Millet worked on ''Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz)'',<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/harvesters-resting-ruth-and-boaz-31288|title=Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz)|date=29 January 2018}}</ref> a painting he considered his most important, and on which he worked the longest. Conceived to rival his heroes [[Michelangelo]] and [[Poussin]], it was also the painting that marked his transition from the depiction of symbolic imagery of peasant life to that of contemporary social conditions. It was the only painting he ever dated, and was the first work to garner him official recognition, a second-class medal at the 1853 salon.<ref>Murphy, p. 60</ref>

In the mid-1850s, Millet produced a small number of etchings of peasant subjects, such as ''Man with a Wheelbarrow'' (1855) and ''Woman Carding Wool'' (1855–1857).<ref>Pollock, p. 58.</ref>

====''The Gleaners''====
{{main|The Gleaners}}
[[Image:Jean-François Millet - Gleaners - Google Art Project 2.jpg|thumb|right|''[[The Gleaners]]'', 1857. [[Musée d'Orsay]], Paris.]]
This is one of the most well known of Millet's paintings, ''[[The Gleaners]]'' (1857). While Millet was walking the fields around Barbizon, one theme returned to his pencil and brush for seven years—[[gleaning]]—the centuries-old right of poor women and children to remove the bits of grain left in the fields following the harvest. He found the theme an eternal one, linked to stories from the Old Testament. In 1857, he submitted the painting ''The Gleaners'' to the Salon to an unenthusiastic, even hostile, public.

(Earlier versions include a vertical composition painted in 1854, an etching of 1855–56 which directly presaged the horizontal format of the painting now in the [[Musée d'Orsay]].<ref>Murphy, p. 103.</ref>)

A warm golden light suggests something sacred and eternal in this daily scene where the struggle to survive takes place. During his years of preparatory studies, Millet contemplated how best to convey the sense of repetition and fatigue in the peasants' daily lives. Lines traced over each woman's back lead to the ground and then back up in a repetitive motion identical to their unending, backbreaking labor. Along the horizon, the setting sun silhouettes the farm with its abundant stacks of grain, in contrast to the large shadowy figures in the foreground. The dark homespun dresses of the gleaners cut robust forms against the golden field, giving each woman a noble, monumental strength.

====''The Angelus''====
{{main|The Angelus (painting)}}
[[Image:JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET - El Ángelus (Museo de Orsay, 1857-1859. Óleo sobre lienzo, 55.5 x 66 cm).jpg|thumb|left|''The Angelus'', 1857–1859, [[Musée d'Orsay]], Paris.]]

The painting was commissioned by Thomas Gold Appleton, an American [[art collector]] based in [[Boston]], Massachusetts. Appleton previously studied with Millet's friend, the Barbizon painter [[Constant Troyon]]. It was completed during the summer of 1857. Millet added a steeple and changed the initial title of the work, ''Prayer for the Potato Crop'' to ''The Angelus'' when the purchaser failed to take possession of it in 1859. Displayed to the public for the first time in 1865, the painting changed hands several times, increasing only modestly in value, since some considered the artist's political sympathies suspect. Upon Millet's death a decade later, a bidding war between the US and France ensued, ending some years later with a price tag of 800,000 gold francs.

The disparity between the apparent value of the painting and the poor estate of Millet's surviving family was a major impetus in the invention of the {{lang|fr|[[droit de suite]]}}, intended to compensate artists or their heirs when works are resold.<ref>Stokes, p. 77.</ref>