Essay on The Visual Analysis of The Gleaners
The Gleaners (Des glaneuses) is an oil painting, 83.8 cm Г — 111.8 cm (33 in Г — 44
in), created by French realist painter Jean Francois Millet in 1857. The piece of oil
painting vividly depicts the nineteenth century French rural life, with a rich flavor of
harvest.
Jean Francois Millet arranges the farm as the main scene of background, and aims at
three women gleaners being bent to pick up ears of wheat. Through the observation
of the painting, we can see three peasant women occupy in the center of the screen,
each bending with different angles, while their eyes all raking down to the ground. To
contrast with the distant crowd, they wear coarse clothes and clunky wooden shoes,
having robust statures. It is not appropriate to say that they ... Show more content on
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As some parts of background are closer to the light source than the front, they are
applied with brighter hues, high in value. In addition, Millet places things like
haystack, trees and farmhouse in the back, and peasant women in the front. Hence.
On the basis the positions of objects, the principle of line perspective, and the
relative distance to the viewer, three gleaners visually appear within a larger
proportion on the painting. In other words, the front figures sizes are bigger than the
back objects . Further more, in the painting, the Gleaners , the entire screen is filled
with contrast elements. First of all, the main figures in the front labor scene are full
of rich vigor, contrasting to the background with silent objects such as hay, trees and
farmhouse. Secondly, the color brightness of the front contrast to the back, as well as
the comparison of relative sizes between figures and scenery, applying the principle
of perspective. What s more, the most classic is the horizontal line, the intersection of
the sky and the ground, contrasting with the light source, from the top left.
Consequently, 2D and 3D spatial effects are combined precisely. Meanwhile, the
sense of space of the image is strengthened as well.
For this oil painting on canvas, the painter Jean Francois Millet did use concise
expression means, instead of complex techniques. Hence,