Description
Women Carrying Faggots shows two women bending forward beneath enormous bundles of branches, one nearer the center and right and the other behind at the left. A hazy wooded background gives their close effort a larger setting. Millet makes the burden visible through its relation to the bent bodies, allowing the weight of ordinary materials to become a substantial human subject.
Made about 1858, the drawing uses charcoal with white gouache highlights on heavy gray-blue laid paper. Millet’s interest in gathering, cutting and carrying wood in the Fontainebleau forest provides a context for the scene, while its possible relation to a painting of the same title remains tentative. The drawing’s varied dark and light materials give the figures a worked surface, turning a familiar rural task into an encounter with bodily effort and the weight of ordinary materials.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Jean-François Millet collection.
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