Few works by Vincent van Gogh so directly reveal his admiration for another artist as Morning. Going to Work (after Millet). Painted in 1890, just months before his death, this piece is part of a remarkable series in which van Gogh copied and reimagined compositions by Jean-François Millet, the French painter he called “more father to me than anyone.” Van Gogh did not simply reproduce Millet’s images; he transformed them, infusing them with his own color, energy, and sense of empathy.

This painting is one of at least twenty-one “translations” after Millet that van Gogh completed during his final years, a period marked by both creative intensity and personal struggle. The scene captures a line of laborers trudging across a frosty field at dawn, their forms bent with the weight of another day’s toil. Van Gogh’s brushwork is urgent and rhythmic, animating the workers’ coats and the earth beneath their feet with thick, swirling strokes. The pale yellow sky, streaked with pink, signals the hope and hardship of a new morning, while the figures’ dark silhouettes underscore their anonymity and solidarity.

Where Millet’s original was subdued, van Gogh’s version pulses with color and movement, transforming a quiet moment of rural life into a vivid meditation on endurance. The painting’s composition, with its horizon low and sky vast, echoes van Gogh’s own The Sower and his lifelong fascination with the dignity of rural labor. The exact medium of Morning. Going to Work (after Millet) is uncertain, as van Gogh worked in both oil and watercolor for his Millet series, often on paper due to limited resources during his stay at the asylum in Saint-Rémy.

The painting’s subsequent history is less documented than some of his other works, but it stands as a testament to van Gogh’s late style and his dialogue with the art of the past. Today, the piece is held in a private collection, rarely exhibited, and serves as a poignant reminder of van Gogh’s final year—a time when, despite illness and isolation, he reached out to his artistic heroes and, in doing so, created something uniquely his own.