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The Sower
Jean-François Millet · Realism & Academic
- Artist
- Jean-François Millet (1814–1875)
- Date
- 1850
- Dimensions
- 101.6 x 82.6 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, United States
Millet’s The Sower shows a peasant striding down a steep hillside at dusk, flinging seed from a bag slung over his shoulder. Shown at the Salon of 1850–51, it turned an anonymous farm labourer into a monumental, almost heroic figure.
A closer look
The sower’s face is in shadow and his body is drawn in powerful, simplified masses, so that he becomes a symbol of all who work the land. Behind him, birds swoop down to eat the seed, and a second figure ploughs with oxen on the ridge. In the politically charged years after the 1848 revolution, some critics saw the painting as a dangerous celebration of the working class. Millet himself insisted he simply painted the peasant life he knew.
History of the painting
The Sower was bought by the Boston collector Quincy Adams Shaw, who admired Millet deeply and assembled the largest group of his works in the United States, including many drawings and pastels. In 1917 Shaw's heirs gave the collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which as a result has one of the finest Millet holdings in the world; it helped make Millet one of the most popular painters in 19th-century America.
