In The Gleaners, how is the Legacy discussed?
The Gleaners is one of Millet's best-known works. Its imagery of bending peasant women gleaning was paraphrased frequently in works by younger artists such as Pissarro, Renoir, Seurat, and van Gogh. Art historian Robert Rosenblum says Millet's painting introduced "imposing new presences in the repertory of mid-century art, with endless progeny in city and country. Daumier's and Degas's laundresses, and even more so Caillebotte's floor-scrapers, are almost unthinkable without Millet's epic hymn to labor."
The Gleaners provides evidence of Millet's role as a contemporary social critic. His brutal depiction of three hunched, female paupers segregated from the laborers and the abundant crop in the distance demonstrates his attention to, if not necessarily sympathy for, the plight of the poorest members of the community around Barbizon and its larger neighbor, Chailly, as the area experienced the growing pains of French modernization. Only about thirty-five miles from the French capital (whose population doubled between 1831 and 1851), the rich, broad plain bordering the forest of Fontainebleau was among the earliest with a rail link to Paris, readily lending itself to feeding the burgeoning city.
Studies tracing the transformation of rural France in the nineteenth century note that little change in peasant life occurred beyond northern France and the Paris basin until the last quarter of the century. Millet's representation of class strife on a large-scale farm was thus uniquely modern in the 1850s.The painting inspired and is discussed in the 2000 film by Agnès Varda, The Gleaners and I. The film itself inspired a 2019 studio album by American jazz bassist Larry Grenadier. The Gleaners was included in the Nintendo Switch game Animal Crossing: New Horizons as a piece of art that can be donated to the museum.
Seurat Caillebotte's floor-scrapers Robert Rosenblum Degas Daumier Agnès Varda peasant Pissarro Animal Crossing: New Horizons van Gogh Renoir Larry Grenadier gleaning The Gleaners and I Paris 2019 studio album