Breaking Flax

Breaking Flax, painted around 1850, depicts one of the many manual tasks involved in processing flax into linen fiber—a labor-intensive process that had been performed by rural workers for centuries before industrialization gradually displaced it. Millet's interest in traditional agricultural processes was inseparable from his documentation of a rural world he recognized was being transformed by mechanization and urbanization during the Second Empire. The subject—two workers beating flax stalks to separate the fiber—is rendered with the combination of physical accuracy and dignified monumentality that characterizes Millet's best figure paintings. The work belongs to the early Barbizon period when Millet was developing the visual language for agricultural labor that would culminate in The Gleaners and The Angelus, works that defined his international reputation.

The figure of the laboring peasant is rendered with the monumental solidity that characterizes Millet's treatment of working bodies. Earthy browns and ochres dominate the palette, with the rhythmic movement of the labor conveyed through the figure's powerful pose.