End of the Hamlet of Gruchy

Millet once put this spot into words. Going down toward the sea, he wrote, you suddenly face the great view of the water and the boundless horizon, and near the last house an old elm stands against the infinite void. How long, he wondered, had the poor old tree stood there, beaten by the north wind. He painted the place several times, and in this version of 1856 the elm is the centre of the picture, a tall ragged trunk leaning out over a low stone wall, with the Channel calm and blue behind it. A woman and a child stand at the wall looking out to sea. On the left rises the gable of the last house, grey stone under thatch, with a spinning wheel by the door and white geese in the lane. Gruchy belongs to the commune of Gréville, and Millet's friend and biographer Alfred Sensier listed this canvas as the end of the village of Gréville. The museum thinks it may have been painted for a buyer in Perpignan, at the far southern end of France, recorded only by his initials, M. P.