Download image:
Jean-François Millet
1814-1875
Woman Seated with a Bundle of Kindling
1850s
Black chalk on paper.
12 3/16 x 8 5/8 inches (310 x 219 mm)
Gift of Edwin Thorne.
1981.71
Notes:
Watermark: none.
Here we see an un-romanticized view of agricultural labor and rural poverty. A weary woman rests on the thick roots of a tree, having placed a bundle of kindling beside her. Her able but worn hands lie intertwined in her lap, and her face is slack with exhaustion. In the 1850s, Millet repeatedly depicted the women who gathered and sold twigs and branches for firewood in the Fontainebleau forest.
Inscription:
Signed with initials at lower left, in black chalk, "J.F.M.".
Provenance:
Germain Seligman, New York; Mrs. Landon K. Thorne (the donor's mother); Edwin Thorne, Greenwich, CT.
Associated names:
Seligman, Germain, former owner.
Thorne, Landon K., Mrs., former owner.
Thorne, Edwin, donor.
Bibliography:
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Twentieth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981-1983. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984, p. 277.
Catalog link:
Artist page:
School:
Century:
Classification:
Department: