Workers and Peasants

most, magnificent, generous, workers, peasants

  • Jean François Millet, 'Going to Work'

    Jean François Millet, 'Going to Work', 1863. Museum no. CAI 307

    Jean François Millet (1814-75)
    'Going to Work'
    1863
    Etching
    Museum no. CAI 307
    Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides

    Millet began etching in the mid 1850s, making a series of prints after his own paintings. This is a version of a picture that is now in Glasgow. The simple fork and water jar carried by the peasants are, for the time the print was made, old-fashioned. The two figures, their features in deep shadow, appear to represent age-old archetypes rather than individuals.

  • Jean François Millet, 'The Gleaners'

    Jean François Millet, 'The Gleaners', About 1855-1856. Museum no. CAI 311

    Jean François Millet (1814-75)
    'The Gleaners'
    About 1855-1856
    Etching
    Museum no. CAI 311
    Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides

    Millet is best known for his images of peasants working the land. Although his depictions of rural labour are bleak, they have a conscious elegiac quality at a time when traditional French peasant life was in retreat. This etching shows three women picking up the ears of corn missed by the harvesters. Millet's painting of the same subject is in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

  • Eugène Delacroix, 'A Blacksmith'

    Eugène Delacroix, 'A Blacksmith', 1833. Museum no. CAI 348

    Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)
    'A Blacksmith'

    1833
    Aquatint and drypoint (Delteil 19, State II)
    Museum no. CAI 348
    Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides

    One of Delacroix's most original and powerful prints, is based on a lost oil painting. Delacroix has exploited to the full the possibilities of the aquatint process to render the rich darks of the blacksmith's forge from which the iron appears to glow with heat. This is a particularly fine, early impression before the erasure of Delacroix's marginal technical trials.

  • Léon Auguste Lhermitte, 'The Lathe'

    Léon Auguste Lhermitte, 'The Lathe', 1868. Museum no. CAI 70

    Léon Auguste Lhermitte (1844-1925)
    'The Lathe'
    1868
    Charcoal
    Museum no. CAI 70
    Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides

    The French artist Lhermitte made a series of studies of rural craftsmen. He was influenced by Legros, who almost certainly introduced him to Ionides. The subject of working on a lathe would have appealed to Ionides because he himself practised wood-turning as a hobby. This study is in charcoal, an unusual medium for independent works of art at that time.

  • William Strang ,'The Fortune Teller'

    William Strang ,'The Fortune Teller', 1883. Museum no. CAI 809

    William Strang (1859-1921)
    'The Fortune Teller'
    1883
    Etching
    Museum no. CAI 809
    Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides

    Between 1876 and 1880 Strang studied at the Slade School of Art in London under Alphonse Legros, whose uncompromising realism exerted a strong influence. This enigmatic print has a highly charged atmosphere. The central figure looks suspiciously at the man who offers a coin, while the deeply shadowed face of the fortune-teller makes her expression unreadable.