The Gleaners

In the background of Millet's Gleaners, at the far right, a tiny figure sits on horseback watching the harvest. He is the overseer, the farmer's man. His job is to make sure the paid harvesters keep working, and that the gleaning women at the front are allowed to pick up only what has been left behind. Millet painted the entire rural class hierarchy into one canvas. The owner's wealth is in the huge wheat stacks piled at the back. The manager is on his horse enforcing it. The three women at the front are all that is left after both of them have taken what they want. The Salon of 1857 read the painting as a socialist manifesto and attacked it as a threat to public order. Now at Musée d'Orsay, Paris @museeorsay