"I had never really wanted a photograph of a picture before I saw Millet's Man With The Hoe. I was about twelve or thirteen years old, I had read Eugenie Grandet of Balzac, and I did have some feeling about what french country was like but The Man With The Hoe made it different, it made it ground not country, and France has been that to me ever since. France is made of ground, of earth. When I managed to get a photograph of the picture and took it home my eldest brother looked at it and said what is it and I said it is Millet's Man With The Hoe. It is a hell of a hoe said my brother."
Gertrude Stein Paris France
3 comments:
That painting is on the cover of my Penguin Classics edition of 'The Earth' by Zola. I loved the book - the image sums up it up so well.
celia
It sums up the way I feel after a day at the allotment.
I must check out that book - I also love that painting.The hoe is connecting that man to the soil and that's a good feeling.
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