Peasant Girl

Millet, Jean-Francois, manner of 1814 - 1875

Summary

This small, informal portrait of a young girl, seated on a wooden bench with her arms folded loosely across her body, purports to be by Jean-François Millet. Her long, dark hair is neatly tied back and she wears a plain brown dress with a white scarf around her neck. The brushwork is somewhat loose, avoiding fine detail, especially in the arms and hands. She looks patiently at the viewer, with half her face in shadow. There is little attempt by the artist to idealise her, beyond the treatment of her lips, which are strikingly red. Millet specialised from the late 1840s in rural genre scenes and portraits of peasants. His poignant and compassionate paintings of rural labourers have an epic quality, with the toiling figures often treated monumentally, almost sculpturally.