Haystacks: Autumn

Haystacks: Autumn, painted in 1874, belongs to the final phase of Millet's career, when his health was declining but his ambition for large-scale seasonal imagery remained undiminished. The haystacks here are not incidental background elements but the true protagonists of the composition — massive forms that carry the weight of a year's agricultural labour compressed into golden mounds. Millet had contemplated a cycle of the four seasons throughout much of his working life, and autumn held a particular significance: the moment of completion before winter's reduction. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's canvas demonstrates his late manner, in which colour becomes more saturated and the handling more expressive than in his earlier, more restrained Barbizon work. His 1874 production is also notable for how it anticipates the interest later Impressionists — and crucially van Gogh — would take in the haystack and the seasonal harvest as subjects for exploring light and time's passage. Vincent van Gogh, who revered Millet above nearly all other painters, made direct copies after Millet's seasonal works and credited him as the moral conscience of European painting.

The haystacks are built up with thick, curved strokes that trace the spiral shape of the stacked hay, giving each form a sculptural density. Millet chose a high golden palette for the stacks themselves — yellow ochre, raw sienna, warm orange — set against a cooler blue-grey sky that sharpens the contrast between warm earth and cool air.