None of them guessed when they looked at The Gleaners or The Man with the Hoe, oppressed by fatigue, bowed over the earth like beasts beneath a yoke, that the artist who painted them thought their pains natural, good because moral, and beautiful because good.
"You are sitting under the trees," he wrote in 1851, "feeling all the ease, all the tranquillity that can possibly be enjoyed; you see some poor figure laden with a faggot come turning out of some little path. The unexpected and always striking way in which this figure appears to you carries your mind instantly to the sadness of human life. . . .
'Quel plaisir a-t-il eu depuis qu'il est au monde?
En est-il un plus pauvre en la machine ronde?'[1]
... In tilled lands you see these figures digging and delving. From time to time you see one straighten his loins and wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. Is this the gay frolicsome work in which some people
- ↑ In all the world what pleasure has he seen?
Lives any poorer on this round machine?
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