Сенокос

Bastien-Lepage came from a farming village in Lorraine, and in 1877 he painted the hay harvest as he had actually seen it. A young peasant woman sits on the cut grass, worn out, staring at nothing, while behind her a man lies flat on his back, sleeping off the work. There is no prettiness and no sermon, only the heaviness of a body that has been labouring in the sun. Painters of his generation were turning from grand subjects toward ordinary rural life, shown life-size and with almost photographic exactness, and this became one of the pictures that defined that naturalist taste. Critics fixed on the woman's dazed, empty gaze, unsure whether she was tired, dreaming or simply blank. The wildflowers and stubble around her are painted almost blade by blade.