The Plain of Chailly with Harrow and Plough

The agricultural implements of the Barbizon plain — ploughs, harrows, carts — appear in Millet's work both as props for his figure scenes and as subjects in their own right, invested with the same dignity he accorded to the peasants who used them. The Plain of Chailly with Harrow and Plough, painted in 1862 and now in the Belvedere in Vienna, depicts the broad, flat agricultural landscape around Barbizon with implements left in the foreground as if recently abandoned by workers who have moved off-canvas. The plain of Chailly was one of the characteristic landscapes Millet painted repeatedly from his Barbizon base — its horizon-dominated flatness and vast sky particularly suited to his sense of nature's scale against human smallness. The Belvedere's strong collection of Barbizon and French Romantic painting reflects the broad European appetite for this school that had developed by the mid-nineteenth century. The implements become actors in their own right: evidence of labor past and labor yet to come, markers of the unceasing cycle of agricultural work that Millet saw as the fundamental condition of rural existence.

The composition is structured around the strong horizontal of the plain's edge and the open sky above it. Agricultural implements in the foreground are painted with careful descriptive accuracy, while the distance is handled in atmospheric perspective, tones softening toward the horizon. The palette is dominated by ochres and blue-grays.