Why it matters
Two peasants stop digging potatoes and bow their heads in prayer as the church bell rings at the end of the working day. Millet remembered how his grandmother always made the family stop work in the fields to say the Angelus.
Did you know?
- It was completed between 1857 and 1859.
- It was commissioned by the American collector Thomas Gold Appleton, who never collected it.
- Millet then added the church steeple and changed the title from Prayer for the Potato Crop.
- It drove prices for Barbizon School paintings to record levels.
Based on the Wikipedia article The Angelus (painting) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
