{"id":1531,"date":"2026-05-11T21:27:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T19:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/horscadre.paris\/the-sower-the-painting-by-millet-that-van-gogh-painted-throughout-his-life\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T22:43:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:43:55","slug":"the-sower-the-painting-by-millet-that-van-gogh-painted-throughout-his-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horscadre.paris\/en\/the-sower-the-painting-by-millet-that-van-gogh-painted-throughout-his-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sower \u2014 the painting by Millet that Van Gogh painted throughout his life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Hague, fall 1880. Vincent van Gogh is twenty-seven years old; he has just given up preaching the Gospel in the Borinage, and he has decided to become a painter. For his very first serious exercise, he chooses a subject. He takes a sheet of paper and a pencil and copies a painting he knows by heart from his years as an art dealer at Goupil: Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet\u2019s *The Sower<\/strong>*. <\/p>\n\n

There is nothing technically remarkable about this drawing. It is the work of an apprentice. But it marks the symbolic beginning<\/strong> of Van Gogh\u2019s career. When, ten years later, he died in Auvers-sur-Oise after painting *The Starry Night*<\/em>, *The Potato Eaters*<\/em>, and so many other masterpieces, he would have returned to the motif of *The Sower* at least four times in his paintings<\/strong>: in June 1888 in Arles, in November 1888 in a version set at sunset that is now considered one of his most powerful, and in October 1889 in Saint-R\u00e9my, where he meticulously copied Millet to combat the doubt that was assailing him. <\/p>\n\n

“The<\/em> Millet Sower<\/em> ” is not just a painting. Thanks to Van Gogh, it has become a pictorial model<\/strong> that an entire movement in modern art would draw upon for half a century. This article explains how. <\/p>\n\n

Millet’s Painting \u2014 1850 Salon<\/h2>\n\n

In 1849, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet had just left Paris for Barbizon, fleeing the cholera epidemic. He was thirty-five years old, had few resources, and nine mouths to feed. But he had a conviction: he wanted to paint the peasant on a large scale<\/strong>, as a subject worthy of the Salon, and no longer as a decorative figure in pastoral scenes. *The Sower*<\/em> was the first major work<\/strong> he created in this vein. <\/p>\n\n

The painting was completed sometime in 1850. According to Alfred Sensier, his friend and first biographer, Millet painted it \u201cwith verve, with furious passion<\/em>, \u201d<\/em> but realized upon finishing that the canvas was too short\u2014the sower\u2019s gesture extended beyond it. He then reportedly created a second, complete version<\/strong> by tracing the lines of the first, producing what Sensier calls \u201cthe twin brother.\u201d<\/strong> It was this second version that Millet submitted to the 1850\u20131851 Salon<\/strong>, which opened in late 1850 at the Palais Royal. <\/p>\n\n

*The Sower*<\/em> is exhibited alongside another painting, *The Bundlers<\/em>*. At least nineteen critics<\/strong> write about the painting during the Salon\u2014a considerable number, reflecting the attention it received. Opinions on the work are deeply divided<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

The Painting \u2014 What It Depicts<\/h2>\n\n

*The Sower*<\/em> (Boston version, 1850) is an oil on canvas<\/strong> measuring 101.6 centimeters high by 82.6 centimeters wide<\/strong>. It is a vertical, nearly square composition. The painting has been housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston<\/strong>, since 1917, having been donated by the children of Quincy Adams Shaw. <\/p>\n\n

The painting depicts a single figure<\/strong> at the center of the composition: a peasant in the midst of sowing. He strides forward through a field that appears to have been freshly plowed. His attire is accurately depicted<\/strong>: a weather-beaten felt hat, a red or brown jacket, blue breeches, his legs wrapped in straw braids<\/strong> to protect them from the winter cold\u2014a detail indicating that the scene takes place in late fall or early winter<\/strong>, the traditional sowing season in northern France. A bag of seeds hangs over his left shoulder. His right hand reaches into the bag, pulls it out, and flings the seeds forward. <\/p>\n\n

In the background, on the right, a team of oxen<\/strong> is plowing the ground to prepare for the next phase of sowing. On the left, several crows<\/strong> are pecking at the ground\u2014already there to scavenge the seeds that have just been sown. The sky is clear, and the sun appears at the top of the painting, signaling dawn<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

The color palette is muted and earthy<\/strong>: browns, ochres, sienna, blue-gray for the sky, and a muted orange-red for the jacket. There are no bright colors. The light is low and oblique<\/strong>, like that of a low-hanging late-fall sun. <\/p>\n\n

The Gesture \u2014 A Farmer in Motion<\/h2>\n\n

It is here that *The Sower*<\/em> stands in stark contrast to the rest of Millet’s oeuvre and to 19th-century French rural painting.<\/p>\n\n

Millet almost never paints peasants in motion.<\/strong> His major works depict peasants at rest<\/strong>: *The Gleaners*<\/em> (1857) shows three women bent over the ground; *The Angelus*<\/em> (1857\u20131859) shows two peasants standing motionless in prayer; *The Man with the Hoe*<\/em> (1860\u20131862) depicts a peasant leaning on his tool to catch his breath. With *The Sower*<\/em> in 1850, Millet painted, for the first and virtually only time<\/strong> ,<\/strong> a peasant in the midst of action, in full motion<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

Art historian Anthea Callen<\/strong>, in her 2008 study *Art, Sex, and Eugenics: Corpus Delecti*<\/em>, analyzed precisely what Millet does to make this movement so striking. Her conclusion is unequivocal: Millet deliberately distorted<\/strong> the proportions of the sower to make him appear monumental. According to Callen, Millet elongated the figure to about nine heads<\/strong> tall, whereas the classical ideal of the male body\u2014as inherited from ancient Greek and Roman statuary\u2014is seven and a half heads<\/strong>. Based on the average height of a man at the time (1.70 m), this would make the sower approximately two meters four<\/strong> in real life. <\/p>\n\n

This choice is pictorial, not naturalistic<\/strong>. Millet knows that his sower does not look like an ordinary man. He wants<\/strong> him not to look like an ordinary man. Enhanced by the low vantage point<\/strong> Millet adopts\u2014the viewer looks up at<\/strong> the sower from below<\/strong>, as if he himself were on the ground\u2014and by the sower\u2019s dominance of the pictorial space<\/strong> (the figure alone occupies more than two-thirds of the canvas), the effect produced is massive, monumental, almost overwhelming<\/strong>. Art historian Robert L. Herbert<\/strong>, in his seminal study *Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet*<\/em> (1975), highlighted this monumental dimension as Millet\u2019s principal pictorial innovation<\/strong>: transforming a peasant into an epic figure. <\/p>\n\n

The American poet Walt Whitman<\/strong>, who discovered the painting in the United States around 1860, described it in his own words as \u201cof sublime darkness and primal fury<\/strong>, \u201d<\/strong> and saw in it the prototype of the Creative Man<\/strong>, sowing the seeds of a new era. The comparison that recurs time and again in critical literature on this painting, from its first exhibition to the present day, is that with Michelangelo\u2019s sculpted figures<\/strong>: through its suggested musculature, its monumental posture, and the way its silhouette fills the frame<\/strong>, Millet\u2019s Sower bears a resemblance to the giants painted on the vaults of the Sistine Chapel. With one radical difference: Michelangelo painted prophets and sibyls. Millet painted a peasant. <\/p>\n\n

It is precisely this dignified treatment<\/strong> accorded to a man of the people that will spark the scandal.<\/p>\n\n

Multiple versions, multiple voices<\/h2>\n\n

“The Sower<\/em> ” is not a one-of-a-kind painting. It is a motif<\/strong> that Millet revisited throughout his career, producing at least six documented versions<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

The first version<\/strong> dates from 1847\u20131848<\/strong> and is housed at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff<\/strong>. In this Welsh version, the horizon is higher, the sower is less imposing, and the landscape plays a more prominent role than in later versions. This isthe embryonic form<\/strong> of the motif, predating the monumental transformation of 1850. <\/p>\n\n

The two versions from 1850<\/strong> \u2014the one in Boston and its \u201ctwin\u201d at the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art (Kofu, Japan)<\/strong>, originally sold by Millet to Alfred Sensier\u2014are the canonical versions. According to Sensier, it was the Yamanashi version that was originally exhibited at the 1850 Salon (Millet having kept the Boston version to test the composition before painting the second version). The Boston version was purchased in 1851 by the American painter William Morris Hunt<\/strong>, who brought it back to the United States. <\/p>\n\n

After 1850, Millet returned to the subject once again:<\/p>\n\n