Young Woman

Millet is remembered for peasants at heavy work, gleaners bent over a stripped field, a couple pausing for the evening prayer. Before any of that, as a young man in Normandy, he earned his living painting portraits of local people, and single figures of country women run through his work for years afterward. This is one of those quieter subjects, a young woman on her own rather than a scene of labour. Millet had grown up on a farm and knew this world from the inside, which is partly why his figures carry weight even when they are doing nothing in particular. Not much else about this canvas is firmly recorded, which is common for his smaller figure studies.