Noonday Rest

In 1865 a Paris architect named Émile Gavet began commissioning pastels from Millet. He paid the painter a monthly sum, supplied the paper and the sticks of colour, and left the choice of subject to him. Millet was past 50 and had spent most of his career short of money, and in the late 1860s pastel became a large part of his work. This sheet, from 1866, was among the first he made for Gavet.

A man and a woman sleep in the shade of a haystack at midday, the one long break in a harvest day that ran from early morning into the evening. Their sickles lie side by side, their shoes too, and the sheaves next to them lean together in the same pose. Millet drew the straw in black crayon and yellow pastel and let the buff of the paper supply the rest of the gold.

Gavet's money did not last. In June 1875, five months after Millet died, his collection of nearly 100 Millet pastels was auctioned at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, and this one was lot 60.