The Sower

1850

Oil on canvas, 101.6 × 82.6 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

At dusk a peasant flings seed as he strides downhill, oxen harrowing the field behind him.

Ribner sees a near-biblical dignity in the sower that the stonebreakers lack.
The MFA quotes a 19th-century critic: he "seems painted with the earth that he sows."
The American painter William Morris Hunt bought it from Millet around 1851.
One field worker given the scale and stride of a hero, painted soon after the 1848 Revolution gave male farm laborers the vote.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain