Appreciation of Jean-Francois Millet's famous painting "The Gleaners"

Painting name: "The Gleaners", also known as "The Gleaners"

Creator: Jean-Francois Millet (France)

Year of creation: 1857

Category: Oil painting on canvas

Style: Realism

Subject: Scene

Specification: 83.5 cm×111cm

Material: oil paint on cloth

Now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Miller is a painter who is good at expressing peasant life. . Millet's art, like that of the French peasant, has a rustic character. There is real beauty and poetry in his simple and simple paintings. Although most of the farmers in his works are simply dressed and clumsy, they always have a unique charm. "The Gleaners" is the work that best represents Miller's style. It does not show any dramatic scenes, just the scene of people picking up the remaining ears of wheat from the fields after the autumn harvest. The main subject of the picture is just three peasant women bending over to pick up wheat ears. In the background are busy people and high stacks of wheat. These three people are in contrast to the crowd in the distance. They are wearing coarse clothes and heavy wooden shoes. They are strong and not beautiful, let alone elegant. They just bow down humbly and look for scattered and leftover things in the earth. food. However, this simple painting gives the viewer an unusual sense of solemnity. Miller generally adopts a horizontal composition, allowing monument-like figures to appear in the foreground. The three main characters wear red, blue, and yellow hats respectively, and their clothes also use these as the main colors, firmly attracting the audience's attention. Their movements are coherent, calm and orderly. The light source arranged on the left side of the picture shines on the characters, making them appear stronger and more tolerant. Perhaps the long hours of bending down have made them feel very tired, but they are still persisting. Although their faces are hidden, their movements and bodies are more expressive - patient, humble, loyal. The peasant woman wearing a red headscarf is picking up quickly, and her other hand is holding a large bunch of wheat ears in the bag. It can be seen that she has been picking for a while, and there is a small harvest in the bag; the woman in Zalan's headscarf has been picked up. She looked exhausted after repeated bending movements up and down. She put her left hand behind her waist to support her body's strength. The woman on the right side of the painting has her face half-bent, holding a bunch of wheat in her hand. , was carefully inspecting the wheat field that had been picked over to see if there were any missed ears of wheat. The peasant women worked like this back and forth, patiently and painstakingly picking up the ears of wheat for the sake of food and clothing for the whole family, with affection for every grain of grain.

The life of this painting lies in reality. This reality can arouse people's doubts about that society, so the realist painter Miller frightened the bourgeoisie. Major social issues and harsh class antagonisms are profoundly exposed by the artist in this painting. This painting conveys Miller's deep sympathy for the difficult lives of farmers and his special love for rural life. At the same time, Miller is trying to lead us into the depths of the land in this painting, to feel her heaviness and fullness in the open and quiet landscape, to listen to her deep and quiet breathing, to experience her simple and tenacious life, to experience the relationship between the land and the land. The fate of farmers on the land runs naturally. Miller created an unparalleled model of farmers. The farmers in his works have a simple, kind, honest and naive beauty, always exuding the smell of earth. Miller is a great peasant painter, and his art is recognized as a serious epic of rural villages. He used strokes and colors to express farmers' attachment to the land, and also revealed the joy and sorrow of human struggle around the land.

When this painting "The Gleaners" was first created, its subject matter alone was enough to trigger a revolution. When the work was exhibited at the Salon, it immediately attracted widespread attention from the public opinion community. Some critics believe that Miller has obvious political intentions. The work of farmers in the picture conveys the hardship of their lives. Exhibiting such works in the Paris Salon is undoubtedly a challenge and voice of the lower class to the upper class. . Therefore, some people ridiculed Miller's works for implying the violent revolution of farmers. Faced with all kinds of extreme evaluations, Miller defended his art in a letter: "Some people say that I deny the beautiful scenery of the countryside, but I have discovered more things than it in the countryside-never-ending Magnificent; I saw those little flowers of which Christ spoke, 'I say to you, Solomon in all his glory was not as clothed as one of the lilies of the forest.'" Miller believed, "Art! It is a mission of love, not hate. When he expresses the pain of the poor, he is not inciting hatred towards the rich class. "All he has to do is try to figure out how to express the sublime with ordinary and subtle things. thoughts, because that’s where the real power lies. To express all of this harmoniously and naturally requires not only the painter's eyes and hands, but also his entire body and mind.