Three women bend low over a field, their hands reaching for stray stalks of wheat left after the harvest, while haystacks and carts fill the distant background under a pale sky. The Gleaners shows the act of gleaning, in which the poorest rural workers collect leftover grain, a subject associated with poverty and the lowest ranks of rural society. When The Gleaners was exhibited at the Salon of 1857, its focus on laborers and its large scale unsettled the French upper classes, who saw it as a stark depiction of rural poverty and social inequality.

Unlike earlier biblical scenes of gleaning, The Gleaners presents no sense of community or compassion, instead contrasting the hardship of the women in the foreground with the abundant harvest in the distance. The critical response was hostile at first, but after Jean-François Millet’s death, appreciation of his work broadened, and the painting changed hands for increasingly high sums.