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Return from the Fields
Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875)
c. 1846–47
- Medium
- oil on fabric
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 68 x 60 x 10 cm (26 3/4 x 23 5/8 x 3 15/16 in.); Unframed: 46.2 x 37.8 cm (18 3/16 x 14 7/8 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This idealized vision of noble peasant life was painted during a period of intense industrialization in France, accompanied by economic depression and the abandonment of farms. Nostalgic peasant scenes were especially popular in the 1840s, a stark contrast to the disillusionment and tension that would violently surface in the Revolution of 1848. The vague shapes and faces of the family seen here make them symbols of the land, rather than individuals.
