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Peasant Woman Binding Sheaves (after Millet) is an 1889 oil-on-canvas painting by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh showing a woman at work in a wheat field during the harvest. As a young man, Van Gogh pursued what he saw as a religious calling, wanting to minister to working people. Failing to find a vocation in ministry, he turned to art as a means of expressing and communicating his deep sense of the meaning of life. In his series of paintings of wheat fields, Van Gogh expressed through symbolism and use of colour his deeply felt spiritual beliefs, appreciation of manual labourers, and connection to nature.
This work is based on an 1852 drawing of a woman gathering wheat by Jean-François Millet. It is one of several paintings by Van Gogh based on the ten Travaux des champs engravings made for the journal L'Illustration from Millet's drawings of peasant life. Van Gogh's painting is in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.Painting credit: Vincent van Gogh, after Jean-François Millet