At dusk in a field, a church bell rings in the distance, and a peasant couple set down their tools and bow their heads in prayer. With the simplest of compositions, Millet captured the piety and peace of working people; this small picture became one of the most popular and expensive French paintings of the nineteenth century.
Key facts
- Artist
- Jean-François Millet1814–1875 · French
- Date
- 1857–59
- Period
- Realism1840–1880
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 55.5 × 66 cm
- Location
- Musée d'Orsay Paris, France
Actual size
Compared with an adult 170 cm tall
Palette
#251810#3F3122#DFD29C#5E523F#9C8B6BBackground
The Angelus is a traditional Catholic prayer recited three times a day, when the church bell rings, commemorating the Annunciation. Millet said the painting came from a childhood memory: whenever his grandmother heard the bell, she made them stop work to pray for the dead.
It was originally commissioned by an American collector who never collected it. Only after Millet added the church spire on the horizon and the praying gestures did it acquire its present title.
At an auction in Paris in 1889 the Louvre and the American Art Association engaged in a fierce bidding war; the American side won at a record price, provoking nationalist outrage in France. Soon afterwards the French businessman Alfred Chauchard bought it back and bequeathed it to the Louvre; it is now in the Musée d'Orsay.
Technique & composition
The two figures are silhouetted against the sunset sky in a composition of almost solemn simplicity. They stand apart in the field, and the gap between them lines up with in the distance.
Warm golds and deep browns evoke the dusk; light from behind makes the figures' outlines glow. The horizon is high and the earth fills most of the picture, emphasising the peasants' bond with the land.
Details
Symbolism
The sacred in the everyday
There are no angels or saints, only an ordinary peasant couple praying in a field. Millet placed religious feeling within everyday labour, suggesting that the sacred is not remote but present in daily life.
The tools of labour
stuck in the ground, and all speak of a day of hard work. Prayer interrupts the labour and also gives it meaning.
Stories
- Did you know?
The Surrealist Salvador Dalí was obsessed with the painting and convinced that the basket had originally been a child's coffin. At his request the Louvre X-rayed it in 1963 and found a shape beneath the basket, though whether it is a coffin remains disputed.
- Did you know?
Millet sold the painting for a modest sum, yet decades later it fetched a fortune while his descendants remained poor. The contrast helped prompt France to introduce the artist's resale right in 1920, giving artists and their heirs a share of resale proceeds.
- Did you know?
In 1932 a man slashed the painting with a knife in the Louvre; it was later restored.
- Did you know?
By the late nineteenth century reproductions of The Angelus hung in countless homes in France and other Catholic countries, making it one of the most widespread religious images.
Legacy
The Angelus shows that Realism was not only cold social critique but could be tender and spiritual. It inspired Van Gogh's early paintings of peasants and became the subject of several of Dalí's Surrealist works.
