Collecting the grain left in a field after the harvest, a right of the rural poor protected by custom and, in 19th-century France, by law. The three women in the painting are doing exactly that.

Where is The Gleaners?

In the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. It entered the French national collection in 1890 and moved from the Louvre to the Orsay in 1986.

Why was the painting controversial in 1857?

Because it gave peasant labour the heroic scale of history painting at a time when the middle class feared rural unrest. Some critics read it as a political statement.

What sizes is the print available in?

An A4 poster (listed as 8 by 12 inches) and 12 by 18 inches, unframed or framed. The prices are listed on this page.

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Painting · Jean-François Millet · 1857

Millet, The Gleaners (Des glaneuses)

The Gleaners (Des glaneuses) is Jean-François Millet's oil painting of three peasant women gathering leftover wheat after the harvest, shown at the Paris Salon of 1857 and now in the Musée d'Orsay. Millet died in 1875 and the painting is in the public domain.

Millet's The Gleaners: three peasant women bending to gather wheat stalks in a stubble field, with haystacks and harvesters in the sunlit distance — Jean-François Millet, 1857. Source: Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

History

Gleaning, the right of the rural poor to collect what the harvesters missed, was an ancient custom that French law still protected in the 1850s. Millet, who had settled in the village of Barbizon in 1849, made the subject monumental: the three women fill the foreground at the scale normally reserved for history painting, while the abundance of the harvest and the farm's overseer sit in the sunlit distance.

Critics at the 1857 Salon found the picture politically pointed, a reminder of rural poverty a decade after the 1848 revolution. It sold for a modest sum and was given to the Louvre in 1890; it moved to the Musée d'Orsay when that museum opened in 1986. Van Gogh copied Millet repeatedly and called him the painter he most admired.

What the print shows

Three women in rough dresses and kerchiefs, two bent double and one straightening with a handful of stalks, on a stubble field under a warm sky. Behind them, haystacks, a loaded cart, a crowd of harvesters and a mounted overseer are drawn small and bright. The print is a landscape composition in the painting's proportions (83 by 110 cm in the original), offered in A4 and 12 by 18 inch sizes.

Source and licence

Source: Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Licence: Public domain. The painter died in 1875; a faithful photograph of a public-domain painting carries no new copyright, so the image can be reproduced freely.

Oil on canvas, 83 by 110 cm; inventory RF 592.

Available sizes and prices

Print: paper or framed Etsy listing 4570336006

Size	Paper	Framed
8 × 12 in (21 × 30 cm)	$29.99	$98.99
12 × 18 in (30 × 45 cm)	$44.99	$137.99

Printed to order, shipped in 2–5 business days, free US shipping. Paper: matte fine-art paper. Framed: real wood (black, white, wood, dark wood), shatterproof acrylic, ready to hang.

Buy

Jean-François Millet The Gleaners 1857 (print: paper or framed): buy on Etsy, from $29.99.

Frequently asked questions

What is gleaning?: Collecting the grain left in a field after the harvest, a right of the rural poor protected by custom and, in 19th-century France, by law. The three women in the painting are doing exactly that.
Where is The Gleaners?: In the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. It entered the French national collection in 1890 and moved from the Louvre to the Orsay in 1986.
Why was the painting controversial in 1857?: Because it gave peasant labour the heroic scale of history painting at a time when the middle class feared rural unrest. Some critics read it as a political statement.
What sizes is the print available in?: An A4 poster (listed as 8 by 12 inches) and 12 by 18 inches, unframed or framed. The prices are listed on this page.

Sources

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Published 20 Oct 2026; prices are the live Etsy prices as of 20 Oct 2026. The work is public domain; this page's text is © ThinkDotCo and may be quoted with a link.