Hooien
Jules Bastien-Lepage captures the exhausting reality of rural labor in this masterpiece of French Naturalism. Instead of romanticizing farm life, he shows us a young peasant woman taking a break, her face etched with a thousand-yard stare that suggests she's completely drained from the day's work. The man behind her has already succumbed to a nap in the hay, but she sits upright, lost in thought. Painted in 1877, this work shocked the Paris Salon because it treated ordinary peasants with the same monumental scale usually reserved for historical heroes.
- Technique
- Oil on canvas
- Material
- Canvas
- Dimensions
- 180 cm × 195 cm
Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris
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