Haymaking

1877

Oil on canvas, 180 × 195 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Two hay-makers rest in a mown field near his home village of Damvillers.

A great success at the Salon of 1878; the State bought it from his heirs in 1885.
Émile Zola called him "grandson of Millet and Courbet" and the picture the masterpiece of naturalism in painting.
The horizon sits near the top and the figures crowd the front edge, a cropping close to photography.
A later generation's naturalism: the workers' exhaustion shown plainly.

Naturalism: a later, more detailed form of Realism; the name Zola used for art that recorded life as observed.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain