Jean-François Millet is best known today for his heroic portrayals of the rural laborers of France. In 1849, he settled in the village of Barbizon, on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest, forty miles southeast of Paris. There he became affiliated with the landscape painters of the Barbizon School, who often worked directly from nature. Millet favored scenes of peasants at work, a theme made even more meaningful by the tumultuous labor revolutions of 1848 and France's growing industrialization.
A traditionally trained painter, Millet had a thorough grounding in classical art and a firm command of the standard working method of developing compositions through a series of preparatory studies. Yet, instead of selecting the typical famous subjects from history or literature, Millet painted nameless laborers engaged in routine activities. This canvas, with its noble figure bathed in golden light, demonstrates the artist's ability to idealize the people who worked the fields of the French countryside. With his simple farm tools and clothing, the peasant pushing a wheelbarrow becomes a timeless symbol of the dignity of labor and of a rapidly disappearing way of life. Millet's popularity has fluctuated with the times, but his distinctive attitude and imagery have been highly influential, inspiring artists from Vincent van Gogh and Camille Pissarro to the American poet Walt Whitman.
Ah Millet! Millet! How he has painted humanity, and that quality familiar yet solemn.
-Artist Vincent Van Gogh, 1890
