Meules, automne

This was one of Millet's last paintings, part of a set of the four seasons commissioned in 1868 by a wealthy Alsatian industrialist, Frederic Hartmann. Millet picked at the series for seven years and was still working on it near his death in 1875. Autumn is the emptied field. The harvest is in, the gleaners he so often painted have gone, and only sheep are left to crop the stubble under a heavy sky. Behind the great stacks lie the flat plain of Chailly and the roofs of Barbizon, the village where he had settled among other painters. Up close the finish is rough and unresolved, bare patches of the pinkish underpaint showing through, and you can follow the drawing under the haystacks, left visible rather than covered over.