The Angelus Postcard

This masterpiece is one of many portrayals of rural life by Jean-Francois Millet, a founder of the Barbizon School of Painting and a son of farmers. He was noted for his scenes of peasant farmers, which conservative art critics disdained. He holds a prominent place among the painters of social realism. His works have a melancholy quality and this artist may have been inspired by his love of Latin bucolic poetry, especially Virgil's Georgics. This painting depicts a scene in which a man and woman have stopped digging potatoes to recite the Angelus, the prayer which commemorates the Anunciation made to Mary by the Angel Gabriel. The artist commented that the scene was a childhood memory of his grandmother's habit. The artist died in Paris in 1875 at the age of sixty years.