Detail of The Sower by Millet in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, June 2010

The Sower

1850
Jean-François Millet, French, 1814–1875

Dimensions: 101.6 x 82.6 cm (40 x 32 1/2 in.)

Medium or Technique: Oil on canvas

Classification: Paintings
Type: Genre - Exterior; Figure

Catalogue Raisonné: Murphy 18

Accession Number: 17.1485

Jean-François Millet was the artist that van Gogh most revered. Although he never saw Millet's famous Sower - already in a Boston collection before he was born - van Gogh admired Millet's other treatments of the theme, and sought to emulate them. At the very beginning of his career, he wrote that "I must draw diggers, sowers, men & women at the plough, without cease. . . I no longer stand as helpless before nature as I used to do."

Text from: www.mfa.org/collections/object/the-sower-31601