In The Hayfield

Submitted By jareddc
Words: 645
Pages: 3

In the Hayfield "In the Hayfield" by Julien Dupre represents the simple life style of a peasant farmer in the 19th century. In the 19th century farming was a difficult job for simple people. It took up a lot of time and farmers usually worked from dawn to dusk only getting a break on Sundays. I feel like this painting by Julien Dupre represents this because of many things he included in it. There is a young woman about the age of 20 directly in the middle of the painting in an action pose. She is in the middle of turning some hay when it's almost as if someone takes a snapshot of exactly what's going on in that moment. The left side of the young women there is a little village with a few cozy looking houses. The artist probably just modeled some houses that he saw in the country side. On the right side there is five men throwing hay onto a house drawn wagon. This also makes the painting realistic because what would a young woman be doing out in the field far away from the village by herself. It makes sense that there are others helping her with her work. The task seems almost never ending with the long rows and mountainous piles of hay. The subject matter of the painting is still life. He is trying to portray what it would look like in fall harvesting hay in the 19th century. This painting looks as if the artist just took a picture of a person in their daily life. She has her lunch basket along with which shows me that she will be out there all day. The scale of the painting is medium and this makes the young woman in the painting seem life like. The young woman in the center of the painting turning hay looks tired. I say this because of her gaze and facial expressions. She just looks wore out from the seemly endless task because you can see she is very far from her town. The space of the painting is infinite the huge fields seem to go on for a mile or so up to the front step of the little cottages. The hills in the back give it the final touches to make it seem lifelike. There are also many trees in the background that are mostly green and some brown which gives you a sense of late