Cooper Tightening Staves on a Barrel

Constant Troyon, the animal painter, had been Millet's friend since their Paris years in the 1840s, and this canvas belonged to him. Troyon died in 1865, and the following winter his studio and his collection were auctioned at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. The sale ran from 22 January to 1 February 1866 and was so large that this picture came up as lot 564. A Paris dealer, Alphonse Legrand, bought it, and it later passed to the Boston collector Quincy Adams Shaw. A cooper in a blue shirt and a leather apron stands at a big cask in a dim workshop, one arm raised over his shoulder with a mallet, the other hand pressing a driver against the hoops. Spare hoops lean coiled against the cask at the right. The museum points out that Millet chose the moment that explains the whole trade, the instant the hoop is forced down to lock the staves tight. It is dated to about 1848 to 1852. On the left, a tool is left stuck in a chopping block.