How does this artwork elucidate its Description?
This series indeed represents each time a winnower, dressed in his working clothes and with clogs on his feet, who, using a van, blows up the grain to separate it from the straw. An evolution in the representation is however notable in the three paintings. The winnower indeed seems to recover from one version to another.
Be that as it may, The Winnower like Millet's other figures, gleaners, shepherdesses, ploughmen, etc, is much more the representation of a type than of an individual person. Millet wanted above all to create “syntheses” as he called them. The appearance of these peasant subject in Millet's work may have been favored by the socialist climate that reigned around the Revolution of 1848, even if Millet did not participate in it and refused to be called a "socialist".
Revolution of 1848 winnower