of which I shall speak later--is "The Gleaners" (Pl. 3). Here one figure
is not enough to express the continuousness of the movement; the utmost
simplification will not make you feel, as powerfully as he wishes you to
feel it, the crawling progress, the bending together of back and
thighs, the groping of worn fingers in the stubble. The line must be
reinforced and reduplicated, and a second figure, almost a facsimile of
the first, is added. Even this is not enough. He adds a third figure,
not gathering the ear, but about to do so, standing, but stooped forward
and bounded by one great, almost uninterrupted curve from the peak of
the cap over her eyes to the heel which half slips out of the sabot, and
the thing is done. The whole day's work is resumed in that one moment.
The task has endured for hours and will endure till sunset, with only an
occasional break while the back is half-straightened--there is not time
to straighten it wholly. It is the triumph of significant composition,
as "The Sower" is the triumph of significant draughtsmanship.

Or, when an action is more complicated and difficult of suggestion, as
is that, for instance, of digging, he takes it at the beginning and at
the end, as in "The Spaders" (Pl. 4), and makes you understand
everything between. One man is doubled over his spade, his whole weight
brought to bear on the pressing foot which drives the blade into the
ground. The other, with arms outstretched, gives the twisting motion
which lets the loosened earth fall where it is to lie. Each of these
positions is so thoroughly understood and so definitely expressed that
all the other positions of the action are implied in them. You feel the
recurrent rhythm of the movement and could almost count the falling of
the clods.

So far did Millet push the elimination of non-essentials that his heads
have often scarcely any features, his hands, one might say, are without