How one painting triggered two controversies

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) intended to show in a painting the never-ending burdensome life of man. Thus he painted Man with a Hoe (1860-62), not the first painting about peasant life, but certainly the most radical. At the 1863 Salon exhibition, Millet's painting caused a scandal. The public could not understand how he could artistically depict a lower activity in such an unembellished way. They even suspected Millet of being a kind of socialist revolutionary. In the years that followed, silence fell over Millet and the painting, which was rediscovered after the painter's death in the 1880s. Tastes had changed, and critics now praised it as a masterpiece of realism. At the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, it was the most talked-about painting − in a positive sense! A wealthy American woman bought the painting for $125,000 (about 4.1 million in 2023) and brought it to San Francisco.

The painting was interpreted as a socialist protest against the plight of peasants. In the U.S., it inspired the poet Edwin Markham to write a political poem of the same name that criticized precarious working conditions and hinted at a great reckoning. The poem was translated into 37 languages and exerted influence on labor reforms opposed by the upper classes in many countries. The Getty Center in Los Angeles, which acquired the painting in 1985, takes a deep dive into the important history of this painting and explains its cultural impact with Reckoning with Millet's Man with a Hoe. The extraordinary exhibition runs from September 12 through December 10.