The study of a young woman with her hands clasped and holding a switch probably depicts a young goatherder of the Auvergne region and may be the Première pensée or initial sketch for a pen and ink drawing of a Young Auvergne Girl (current location unknown) that was sold in the studio sale following Millet's death in 1875. The young woman's conical straw hat is typical of Auvergne women's costume and is worn by all the goat girls in Millet's everal paintings and
pastels of the subject. Millet visited the mountainous Auvergne region of south-central France during the summer of 1866, and made a substantial number of pencil and pen and ink sketches that were later incorporated into larger works back in his Barbizon studio.

The second drawing is a study for the painting Norman Milkmaid or
La Laitière normande of 1871 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). The milkmaid carries a large brass milk cannister on her left shoulder, supported by a long strap drawn over her head and twisted around her right wrist, as indicated in the present drawing. Recalling his beloved homeland, the theme of a young woman returning from milking in the fields was an important one for Millet that first appeared in his art in 1847 and is recorded in 3 finished drawings, four finished paintings, and a fifth painting left in his studio at his death in 1875. Millet waited out the Franco-Prussian war in the safety of Cherbourg during 1870-71, and this drawing may have been a life study made at the same time as a slightly larger sketch of a milkmaid's upper body and skirt (Cabinet des dessins. Musée du Louvre.)

We are grateful to Alexandra Murphy for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.