The Gleaners

Winslow Homer’s The Gleaners shows a group of women gathering the remnants of crops from a field after a harvest, a traditional practice in rural France that allowed the poorest inhabitants to reap sustenance from the land. Beneath a pale sky, the sketchily rendered figures bending over their work are scattered across the narrow green band representing fields; trees and a haystack, a traditional symbol of plenty, frame the view on either side. The Gleaners appears to be an exercise in contrasts of lights and darks and in the arrangement of forms across a narrow horizontal space.

Homer painted The Gleaners on a ten-month visit to France in 1866 and 1867, during which he worked in the village of Cernay-la-Ville, near Paris. This work is particularly sketch-like, even by the standards of Homer’s early paintings, which critics sometimes faulted for their lack of finish. In places the preliminary black outlines of the figures and the warm orange tones of the unprimed wood surface are visible. The work is said to have been painted on a panel from a door or piece of furniture at the local hotel, a common practice among the many artists who stayed there at the time. It was later acquired by the American painter John La Farge.

During his time in France, Homer painted several works on the theme of rural laborers, including the Terra Foundation’s Haymakers (TF 1989.9). His interest in peasant subjects probably was inspired by his exposure to the work of a group of French painters of country life and landscape, known as the Barbizon school. Homer was surely aware of the work of its most famous member, Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), whose Gleaners (1857, Paris, Musée d’Orsay) was widely celebrated and reproduced. Homer’s paintings of such subjects in rural France anticipated his lifelong preoccupation with the theme of humankind’s struggle to wrest a livelihood from nature.

Small Pictures by Famous Painters, Maynard Walker Gallery, New York, New York, 1937.

Impressionism and Its Influence in American Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California (organizer). Venues: Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, January 3–31, 1954; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, February 10–March 7, 1954; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas, March 21–April 18, 1954; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, May 3–30, 1954; M. H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California, June 8–July 5, 1954, no. 21. [exh. cat.]

American Classics of the Nineteenth Century, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia; The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1957, no. 55.

American Artists and the French Experience, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–August 27, 1997.

Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920 (The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 15, 1999; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 10, 1999–May 7, 2000 (in modified form). [exh. cat.]

Selections from the Permanent Collection: American Artists in France, 1860–1910, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 10–June 3, 2001.

The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940 (Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains 1840–1940), Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 15–May 25, 2003; Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 8–August 17, 2003. [exh. cat.]

Studied Abroad: Painted Impressions from the Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, September 6, 2003–April 4, 2004.

Le Passage à Paris: les artistes américains en France, 1860–1930 (Passing through Paris: American Artists in France, 1860–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, April 1–October 31, 2005. [exh. brochure]

Le Passage à Paris: les artistes américains en France, 1860–1930 (Passing through Paris: American Artists in France, 1860–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 29, 2006. [exh. brochure]

Teitelbaum, Gene W. Winslow Homer: An Annual 4 (1989). Text pp. 35–36, 57 (cat. 7); fig. 15, p. 52 (black & white).

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Cartwright, Derrick R. The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1999. Text pp. 18, 24 (checklist); fig. 20, p. 18 (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1999. Text pp. 18, 24 (checklist); fig. 20, p. 18 (black & white).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text pp. 13, 19, 28 (checklist); ill. p. 33 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text pp. 13, 19, 28 (checklist); ill. p. 33 (color).