Prints and Authors in the Time of Manet

The Two Diggers

Etching, about 1855
Gift of Winthrop H. Perry, 1923.38

Two men working with or against nature: Jean-François Millet’s unglamorous depictions of rural life and labor contain a moral implication about the conditions of French peasant life. In his prints, Millet emphasizes broad planes and essential lines; he brings out his design on the copper plate by prolonged ‘biting’—leaving the plate in an acid bath overnight, deepening and broadening the incised lines.