Shepherdess Seated on a Rock

There is a small story behind this one. In 1856 Millet had nearly finished a painting of a young shepherdess at Barbizon when a visiting American artist, Edward Wheelwright, saw it in the studio and wanted to buy it. The picture was already promised to someone else, so Millet agreed to paint it again, the only time in his life he is known to have copied one of his own works. This Metropolitan version is that second canvas. The girl wears the linen hood and pale cloak real shepherdesses wore in the villages of north-central France, where Millet lived among the people he painted. She sits knitting while her small flock grazes, tucked into the rock as if she had grown there.