Female Peasant Carrying a Basket and Hay
1870
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1870
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Female Peasant Carrying a Basket and Hay is a 1870 by Auguste Giraudon, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a woman carrying a big basket and some hay. She's dressed in simple clothes, like a peasant. The artist made this painting to look like the works of Jean-François Millet, a famous painter of everyday people. The artist was likely inspired by Millet's style. You can learn more about this style by looking at the work of Auguste Giraudon (French).
During the 1870s, Giraudon commissioned one or more artists—probably a French painter who wished to remain anonymous—to create photographs of peasants. Now called Giraudon’s Artist, this photographer was one of the few in the 1800s specializing in rural figure studies created for use by artists. The images were likely taken near Barbizon, a destination popular with artists who wanted to work from nature. The artistry of these images derives from their skillful use of light, ability to render a subject in the landscape, and a perceptive depiction of human dignity.
Auguste Giraudon was an important Parisian publisher of photographs but not a photographer himself.
Read the full account in the museum source.
