Art

Unlike popular interpretations about his work at the time, Jean-Francois Millets views of the world leaned toward the fatalistic rather than the political as he believed that man was doomed to carry his  burdens. Like much of his artwork, Millets famed oil on canvas painting, Man on a Hoe, aptly reflects the gritty and poverty stricken life of the French peasants who lived and worked in the French countryside.

At the time of this painting, the Industrial Revolution was booming in France and, as a result, thousands of people deserted the farms to chase the promise of better times in the cities. Paintings such as Millets Man with a Hoe, disturbed those members of the French upper class with its focus on the mans larger figure and almost frightening face as well as the threatening thorns which were interpreted to connect the man with his life of emptiness and pain.

Millets paintings, because they showed the life of the peasants, were used by those people who wished to bring awareness of the social inequities of that time period. Contrary to other artists paintings of the same era, Millets showed his peasant subjects in laboring against the unyielding earth. His use of the  impasto style of painting showed, in Man with a Hoe, the depth of despair and hardship that was felt by the peasants. The images that Millet displayed on his paintings showed the starkness of the peasants surroundings as well as their dignity by his use of dark colors, vague coloring that showed little of the mans features.