Peasant Returning from the Manure Heap (Le paysan rentrant du fumier)

Peasant Returning from the Manure Heap is characteristic of the mid-nineteenth-century rural realism of which Jean-François Millet was a leading exponent. The son of a peasant farmer, he frequently depicted laboring rustics in both his etchings and his paintings (such as The Gleaners of 1857, in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris). This etching shows only the back of the figure in a posture that carries the emotional charge of the etching. The laboring peasant, seamlessly integrated into the landscape, appears as quietly strong as the sturdy stone wall through which he steadily pushes his wheelbarrow.