“THE SOWER”

Artwork: The Sower

Artist: Jean-François Millet

Created: 1850

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 101.6 x 82.6 cm

Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA

“The Sower was one of Jean-François Millet’s (1814-75) most influential pictures, produced at a time when the Realist style was causing ripples in the art world.

Images of peasant life had been popular for centuries, usually small and picturesque, presenting the town-dweller with an unthreatening view of the countryside.

But Millet’s peasants were unidealized and shocked the critics with their heroic scale, normality reserved for classical deities or historical celebrities. The Revolution had swept away the old order, leaving the future uncertain and, as a result, any large-scale canvases of peasants were bound to seem inflammatory. The revolutionary intentions of such works by Gustave Courbet, leader of the Realists, were undoubtedly intentional, though Millet’s own politics are far less clear. Nonetheless, The Sower was greeted enthusiastically by republican critics, but negatively by conservatives.” (IZ)

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