Léon Augustin Lhermitte: La vendange à Mont-Saint-Père (1876)

“La vendange à Mont-Saint-Père effectively combines all of the hallmarks of Lhermitte’s most sought-after works: peasants at work in an expansive landscape with multiple figures at various stages of the labor involved in bringing in a harvest of grapes. The composition is complex, with the placement of the figures carefully arranged in order to lead…

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte: Haymaking (1887)

“This enormous painting by the French artist Léon Lhermitte shows a family of peasants resting during haymaking… The old man at the front holds a scythe, a traditional symbol of approaching death. This kind of symbolism and the emphasis on the romantic, idyllic side of peasant life made works of this type extremely popular in…