Peasant with a Wheelbarrow

These works reprise compositions from paintings and drawings produced earlier in Jean-François Millet’s career. With familiar compositions, Millet could focus on technical aspects of the printmaking medium. By simplifying the original arrangements and enlarging the figures, Millet gave his printed subjects monumental stature.

In the unfinished woodblock print on the right, Millet uses the medium’s unrefined aesthetic with its stark tonality and forceful marks to emphasize the simplicity and harshness of peasant life. The subject of the digger turning over soil consumed Millet for almost 20 years. Digging represents one of the peasant’s most physically strenuous tasks, one in which soil is prepared for sowing. This backbreaking labor was necessary because most peasants could not afford the work animals needed to operate a plow. Though Millet proclaimed that his art was not political, it reflects the period’s pressing social concerns regarding the plight of France’s impoverished rural communities.