The three women in the painting stoop low in the field, their hands reaching for leftover stalks of wheat. Their bent figures dominate the foreground, emphasizing the physical toll of their labor. Jean-François Millet’s “The Gleaners,” painted in 1857, immortalized this act of necessity: gleaning, the collection of leftover crops after the harvest. Rooted in agrarian traditions, the term originates from the Old French glener and the Latin glennare, meaning “to gather.” For centuries, gleaning had been a lifeline for the rural poor in England and France — a legally recognized right that allowed them to enter fields after the harvest to collect what remained. French law enshrined it as a civil right in 1554, while in England, it was an unspoken agreement that reflected the feudal system’s delicate balance between the privileged and the poor.
But by the late 18th century, this precarious equilibrium began to unravel. The forces of privatization and industrialization swept through England, as Enclosure Acts transformed common lands into private property, barring access fo... Read more