羊の群れと羊飼いの娘

Millet had spent years being attacked for painting poor farm labourers at a time, just after the revolution of 1848, when pictures of the rural poor made wealthy viewers nervous about unrest in the countryside. This shepherdess, shown at the Salon of 1864, finally won them over. Standing on a flat plain near the village of Barbizon, wrapped in a heavy red cape, she knits quietly with her back to the flock and her dog while low evening light spreads along the horizon behind her. There is nothing heroic or threatening in it, only a girl absorbed in a small task at the close of the day. He had moved out to Barbizon in 1849 to escape a cholera outbreak in Paris, and he stayed there, painting the same fields, for the rest of his life.