The Beautiful Peasants
Millet’s Angelus gives us the gift of gratitude
The light of a golden sunset gleams across the furrows of a field and gilds the sacks of a day’s work. A couple of peasant workers take a moment, in complete isolation, to say a prayer.
The Angelus (L’Angélus) by Jean-François Millet, is one of the most famous paintings in France. Reproductions hang on the walls of tens of thousands of homes, schools and churches.
The painting feels monumental despite being physically small — only 22 by 26 inches — and there’s a profound balance in the painting that I don’t think any other painting has matched.
In fact, if you look at the horizon, the figures, and the line of the wheelbarrow handles, you’ll see that it pretty much corresponds with the Instagram composing grid. That’s what makes it monumental: those strong foreground lines set against the high horizon line. This is intensified by the shadowy figures against the warm waning light. The artist said to his brother,
“It is astonishing how grand everything on the plain appears, towards the approach of night, especially when we see the figures thrown out against the sky. Then they look like giants.”
Our point of view is low as if we are beneath the figures, and they are set in the close foreground. They are…
