Man Turning over the Soil

The Boston museum can only date this small canvas roughly, to about 1847 to 1850. A labourer stands bent almost double in a rough field, both hands low on the handle of a spade, driving it into the ground. His head hangs so far forward that his face is lost in shadow, and the brightest things in the picture are the pale shirt stretched across his back and his blue trousers. Behind him a grassy bank rises against a grey sky, with a dim line of trees far off on the left. The canvas is barely 25 by 32 centimetres. Millet came back to this same action in 1855 and 1856, in an etching called The Diggers, where two men work the ground side by side, their wide hats and jackets left in a heap at the edge of the field.