The Gleaners
This is one of the most well known of Millet's paintings, "The Gleaners" (1857). While Millet was walking the fields around Barbizon, one theme returned to his pencil and brush for seven years—gleaning—the centuries-old right of poor women and children to remove the bits of grain left in the fields following the harvest. He found the theme an eternal one, linked to stories from the Old Testament. In 1857, he submitted the painting "The Gleaners" to the Salon to an unenthusiastic, even hostile, public.