Women Carrying Faggots

Women Carrying Faggots is an important drawing created by Jean-François Millet between 1853 and 1863, capturing a central theme of his artistic output: the dignity and struggle of labor. The highly textural work is executed in charcoal, dramatically heightened with white gouache to emphasize the forms of the heavy loads and the figures themselves. Millet utilized a heavy laid gray-blue paper, framing the composition with a deliberate charcoal border, which adds a somber weight characteristic of his powerful draftsmanship. This combination of intense medium and muted color enhances the emotional resonance of the subject matter.

Millet was a leading figure in the French Realist movement, often dedicating his art to depicting the arduous existence of rural workers. In this piece, several women trudge across the landscape, bent profoundly under the weight of large bundles of sticks, or 'faggots,' collected for firewood. The repetition of the figures suggests the ceaseless and often solitary nature of agricultural life. Unlike earlier academic styles, Millet presents these working women not as idealized peasants, but as monumental, struggling individuals whose physical exertion is palpable in the expressive lines of the charcoal drawing.

This striking example of Millet’s graphic output is held in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it serves as a key reference point for understanding nineteenth-century French drawing. Because the work is over 150 years old, it falls within the public domain, making high-quality photographic prints widely available for study and appreciation. As a preparatory study or a finished piece in its own right, this intense drawing, like many of Millet's depictions of rural existence, remains a powerful commentary on the reality of poverty and labor in the pre-industrialized world.