''Haymaking'' () or ''Resting in the Fields'' is an oil on canvas painting by

Jules Bastien-Lepage Jules Bastien-Lepage (1 November 1848 – 10 December 1884) was a French painter closely associated with the beginning of naturalism, an artistic style that grew out of the Realist movement and paved the way for the development of impressioni ...

, from 1877. First exhibited at the 1878

Paris Salon The Salon (), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art event in the Western world. At the ...

, it was acquired by the

Musée du Luxembourg The () is a museum at 19 in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Established in 1750, it was initially an art museum located in the east wing of the Luxembourg Palace (the matching west wing housed the Marie de' Medici cycle by Peter Paul Rubens) an ...

in 1885 at the posthumous sale of the artist's works. It passed to the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

in 1929 and then to its current home in the

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) () is a museum in Paris, France, on the Rive Gauche, Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts railway station built from 1898 to 1900. The museum holds mai ...

, in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, in 1980.

Description

The painting depicts two peasants, a man and a woman, resting from hard work, in a field. The man is lying on the mown grass, his face is hidden by a straw hat, which allows his beard to be seen, but not the top of his face. The young peasant woman is seated, but her pose and her look express her extreme exhaustion. It is worth noting the seemingly photographic composition of the painting: the horizon line is located at a very high point so that the majority of its surface is occupied in the background by mown grass and haystacks, and the sky is visible only on a small strip of canvas.

Reception

Novelist Émile Zola highly praised Bastien-Lepage as the "grandson of Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet", and considered ''Haymaking'' as a masterpiece of naturalism in painting. Soviet art critic Nina Yarovskaya also praised this painting: "''Les Foins'' is Bastien-Lepage's best painting. Exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1878, it is far from the idyllic interpretations of the peasant theme which characterizes several of his paintings. It faithfully depicts peasants lying exhausted from work under a scorching sun. The posture of the exhausted woman is very expressive with her hands lowered, her head slightly thrown back. The viewer feels the exhaustion of this woman and the efforts required to make the slightest movement."Nina Iarovskaïa, ''Art occidental du XIX s'', Moscow, 1962 (Russian)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haymaking Paintings by Jules Bastien-Lepage 1877 paintings Paintings in the Musée d'Orsay Farming in art Genre paintings