Lot Essay
Caught in the sunlight from her doorway, brushing dust and scraps toward the threshold, the provincial housewife of Woman Sweeping her Home is one of a number of uncommonly thoughtful depictions of peasant women tending their hearths and their families that appear throughout Millet's art. This drawing was probably created about 1857-60, years when Millet devoted a large portion of his time to making finished drawings for a small group of devoted collectors, as well as a few supportive Paris dealers.
Millet's first Barbizon drawings had focused on the work of the forest and the fields, but by the mid-1850's, his exploration of the real events and daily toil of peasant life gave increasing recognition to the household tasks that shaped the days of the wives and older daughters of his village neighbours. Probably also inspired in equal part by the activities of his own household and by the seventeenth century Dutch paintings and prints that had become increasingly important for him, Millet pushed his black crayons to ever more subtle effects as he tried to capture the shifting nuances of the dark village interiors and to give weight to the simple artifacts of daily life. In Woman Sweeping, his figure commands her setting with a solid presence sculpted by a strong side light and moulded with rough, weighty clothing. Although his sweeper may well have evolved from several earlier drawings of women raking hay or weeds, Millet was meticulously attentive to the shifts in posture of the changes in the placement of a woman's hands that differentiated the task of pushing a broom from that of drawing a rake.
The view into a back room, so reminiscent of Dutch domestic scenes, offered the artist an opportunity to expand the range of greys and silvery blacks that define his figure and enliven the surface of the drawing; and it also introduced a second character, a woman working a loom before a leaded window. The weaver, who may be a grandmother in the household, perhaps suggests the future ahead of the younger woman, or may simply reflect the complexity of the peasant woman's tasks.
It is somewhat unusual to find so finished a Millet drawing that is unsigned. Most of Millet's carefully drawn scenes of peasant life were either commissioned by private collectors or were created for sale in a speculative art market where artists' signatures were an expected feature of finished works. One can only guess that Millet may have given Woman Sweeping to a friend of artist-colleague for whom a signature might have seemed superfluous.
Two small sketches for the drawing are included in the Léon Bonnat bequest to the Musée du Louvre (inv. 10425 and 10428). In 1867, Millet repeated the composition (with the woman in a slightly different pose and additional household objects) in a pastel for Emile Gavet, now in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
We are grateful to Alexandra Murphy for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Millet's first Barbizon drawings had focused on the work of the forest and the fields, but by the mid-1850's, his exploration of the real events and daily toil of peasant life gave increasing recognition to the household tasks that shaped the days of the wives and older daughters of his village neighbours. Probably also inspired in equal part by the activities of his own household and by the seventeenth century Dutch paintings and prints that had become increasingly important for him, Millet pushed his black crayons to ever more subtle effects as he tried to capture the shifting nuances of the dark village interiors and to give weight to the simple artifacts of daily life. In Woman Sweeping, his figure commands her setting with a solid presence sculpted by a strong side light and moulded with rough, weighty clothing. Although his sweeper may well have evolved from several earlier drawings of women raking hay or weeds, Millet was meticulously attentive to the shifts in posture of the changes in the placement of a woman's hands that differentiated the task of pushing a broom from that of drawing a rake.
The view into a back room, so reminiscent of Dutch domestic scenes, offered the artist an opportunity to expand the range of greys and silvery blacks that define his figure and enliven the surface of the drawing; and it also introduced a second character, a woman working a loom before a leaded window. The weaver, who may be a grandmother in the household, perhaps suggests the future ahead of the younger woman, or may simply reflect the complexity of the peasant woman's tasks.
It is somewhat unusual to find so finished a Millet drawing that is unsigned. Most of Millet's carefully drawn scenes of peasant life were either commissioned by private collectors or were created for sale in a speculative art market where artists' signatures were an expected feature of finished works. One can only guess that Millet may have given Woman Sweeping to a friend of artist-colleague for whom a signature might have seemed superfluous.
Two small sketches for the drawing are included in the Léon Bonnat bequest to the Musée du Louvre (inv. 10425 and 10428). In 1867, Millet repeated the composition (with the woman in a slightly different pose and additional household objects) in a pastel for Emile Gavet, now in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
We are grateful to Alexandra Murphy for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.