The Return from the Fields

Born into a farming family in Gruchy, Normandy, Jean-François Millet remained deeply connected to the rural labourers and shepherds who became the central subjects of his œuvre. The art critic Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917) described Millet in 1885 as a ‘wonderful poet of nature, who has shown the moral grandeur of the “small people”’ (La France, 9 April 1885; quoted in R. Cotentin et al., Millet, exh. cat., Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 2018, p. 30).

Executed in charcoal on a prepared canvas, the present work is a preparatory study for Millet's oil The Return from the Fields (The Evening Star) painted in 1873 (Christie's, New York, 16 October 1991, lot 88). Silhouetted against the evening sky, the figures evoke the solemn grandeur Millet found in the rhythms of agricultural life, while the composition consciously recalls the Flight into Egypt, elevating an everyday rural scene through the language of religious painting. The drawing belongs to a group of charcoal studies on prepared canvas, including The return of the shepherdess (Christie's, London, 3 July 2018, lot 90), associated with the artists' later years.