Haymaking

The 1880s were hard years in the French countryside. Cheap imported grain was pushing prices down, phylloxera was killing the vineyards, and the young were leaving for the towns. Almost none of that pressure reaches this hayfield, and that is part of why paintings like it sold so well.

Lhermitte sent the canvas to the Paris Salon of 1887, where it hung as number 1519, more than two metres across. A haymaking family has stopped to eat and rest, and the museum's own description points out how completely the labour has been smoothed out of the scene. The heads are set in a half circle, which carries your eye from one face to the next and then away into the field.

Three ages are gathered here, childhood, working life and old age, and the old man at the front holds a scythe, which in earlier painting stood for time running out.