The Winnower

The Winnower went on show at the Paris Salon in 1848, the year Paris overthrew its king in the February revolution and the streets filled with talk of the labouring poor. Into that room Jean-François Millet sent a single peasant, seen in a dim barn, tossing grain from a broad flat basket so the light chaff spills off the front. There is nothing picturesque about the man. His clothes are dun-coloured, his face half in shadow, his whole body bent to the work. To many who saw it that year, a plain image like this carried a clear charge about who did the country's real labour. The writer Théophile Gautier praised the picture while grumbling at its rough, muddy paint.