Peasant Women with Brushwood

"Peasant Women with Firewood" is a painting by the French artist, a bright representative of the Barbizon School Jean-François Millet from the collection of the State Hermitage.

The painting depicts two women in peasant homespun clothes walking along a forest road with huge bundles of firewood behind their backs. On the lower right is the caption: J. F. Millet.

The chief researcher of the Department of Western European Fine Arts of the State Hermitage, Doctor of Art History A. G. Kostenevich in his essay on French art of the XIX - early XX century highly appreciated the picture:

In Peasant Women with Firewood in the Figures of Two Women, From Clogs to Heads, Millet reproduces the tension, the resistance to a pressing burden. And the dark spot of the forest seems to be still piling up on top. But with all that, the tension is not brought to the point of excessiveness that would offend the eye and prevent you from contemplating the picture. The rhythm of the steps of peasant women is measured, almost solemn.

The painting was painted around 1858 and was soon acquired by Count N. A. Kushelev-Bezborodko. After the death of the owner, the painting, like all the works from the collection of Kushelev-Bezborodko, according to the will, was transferred to the Museum of the Academy of Arts and became part of the special Kushelevskaya Gallery there, in the gallery catalog of 1868 it was listed under the title "Collecting Fallen Timber"; in 1922 it was transferred to the State Hermitage Museum.

Millet's preparatory drawing in pencil and gouache (34.3 × 27.6 cm) is known, it dates back to 1858 and is a fully developed sketch of peasant figures. Initially, the drawing was part of the collection of Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in March 1920 it was sold in New York to a certain Seaman, then changing several owners, since November 1962 it has been listed in the collection of the banker Robert Lehman. After Lehman's death in 1969, the drawing, along with the bulk of his collection (about 3,000 pieces of art), was deposited with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1869-1874, Millet worked on a series of paintings on the plot of the seasons. The painting "Winter" (82 × 100 cm) depicts three female figures with bundles of firewood, one of which is compositionally very close to the Hermitage painting. This painting remained unfinished and is in the Cardiff National Museum in the UK. In 2007, Sotheby's auction exhibited Millet's preparatory drawing for this painting (paper, coal; 28 × 37.5 cm), the central figure from this drawing in a mirror image repeats the central figure from the Hermitage painting.