domestic tasks.

We may easily identify our picture as a familiar scene in Millet's
Barbizon surroundings. We are told that "upon all sides of Barbizon,
save one, the plain stretches almost literally as far as the eye can
reach," and presents "a generally level and open surface." "There are
no isolated farmhouses, and no stone walls, fences, or hedges,
except immediately around the villages; and were it not all under
cultivation, the plain might be taken for a vast common."[1]

It is evident, then, that we here see the plain of Barbizon and true
Barbizon peasants of Millet's day. The villagers of the painter's
acquaintance were on the whole a prosperous class, nearly all owning
their houses and a few acres of ground. The big apple-tree under which
the donkey rests is just such an one as grew in Millet's own little
garden.

Fruit trees were his peculiar delight. He knew all their ways,
and "all their special twists and turnings;" how the leaves of the
apple-tree are bunched together on their twigs, and how the roots
spread under ground. "Any artist," he used to say, "can go to the East
and paint a palm-tree, but very few can paint an apple-tree."


[Footnote 1: From Edward Wheelwright's _Recollections of Jean François
Millet,_ in _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1876.]