Jean-François Millet’s signature depictions of peasant workers recognised a disappearing way of life that also echoed his own past: he was among the many rural labourers who left the French countryside. His artistic ability was first recognised in his teenage years while he was labouring on his parents’ freehold farm in Gruchy, a tiny hamlet on the Normandy coast. He was then apprenticed to a painter in nearby Cherbourg in 1833 and left for Paris four years later. This etching was based on paintings he made between 1848 and 1852.

(Leaving for work, 2 October 2021 - 1 May 2022)