A painting a day · No. 23 of 38
The Gleaners
Jean-François Millet (1814–1875)
1857 · Oil on canvas · Musée d'Orsay, Paris
The story
Three women pick up the stalks of wheat left behind after the harvest. Gleaning was the right of the very poorest. Wealthy Parisians, nervous after the revolution of 1848, found the picture threatening.
Look closer
- The three women: one bending, one reaching, one straightening up — like three stages of one movement.
- In the bright distance, the huge haystacks of the rich harvest.
- A man on horseback far off on the right: the overseer, watching.
Did you know
Millet gave farm workers the size and dignity that older paintings kept for saints and heroes.
Why we can show it
Jean-François Millet died in 1875. UK copyright lasts for the artist’s life plus 70 years, so even under today’s rules this painting would have been free for anyone to show since 1946. The photograph is a faithful copy of a flat work, which creates no new copyright. We do not store the picture: it comes from Wikimedia Commons each time it is needed. More on this.