With a bag of seed slung over his shoulder and his legs wrapped in straw for warmth, Millet’s peasant strides down a twilit hillside, sowing winter wheat. In the background, an ox-drawn harrow covers the sown seed with soil. The sower’s monumental scale and dramatic pose signaled Millet’s new approach to the depiction of peasant life, emphasizing the dignity—even heroism—of rural labor. This ennobling of the sower echoed the recent enfranchisement of male agricultural workers in the wake of the 1848 French Revolution. For his 19th-century viewers, Millet’s rough and broad execution evoked the rustic land itself; the peasant, observed one critic, “seems painted with the earth that he sows.” This idea especially resonated with Vincent van Gogh, who considered Millet “that essential modern painter who opened the horizon to many.”

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