Peasant Girl Daydreaming

On 29 April 1880 the Baron de Beurnonville, a Paris collector, sold his modern pictures at the Hôtel Drouot auction house, and five of them were by Millet, who had been dead for five years. Lot 42 was this panel, catalogued simply as a seated peasant woman resting, about 23 centimetres by 17. The lot just before it was an even smaller peasant man resting after the day's work. The title it carries now, Peasant Girl Daydreaming, came later. She sits barefoot on a bank under a dark tree, in a white headscarf, a mustard shawl, a pale loose blouse and a red skirt, her cheek propped on one hand and her eyes turned away from us. In the other hand she holds a short stick. The paint is put on thickly and fast, and the white of the scarf and the sleeves stands out hard against the dark. Millet signed it at the lower left, and the museum dates it to 1848.