Hay Making

Jules Bastien-Lepage completed this monumental rural scene in 1877, depicting exhausted peasants during the hay harvest. A young woman sits in the foreground, her face haggard with weariness, staring vacantly ahead. Behind her, her companion lies flat on his back, completely spent.

Émile Zola called it "the work of Naturalism in painting." The composition is daringly photographic: the high horizon lets hay fill most of the canvas while close framing brings viewers face-to-face with rural labor. The model was the artist's cousin. Now at the Musée d'Orsay.