Calling the Cows Home

Millet mentioned this painting in a letter of August 1872 to his friend and biographer, Alfred Sensier: "I've groaned more than I've worked, since I've done hardly anything but a sketch. You know the subject, a cowherd sounding his horn to collect his cattle at the end of the day." Millet had treated this subject in a charcoal drawing of 1857–58 and a pastel of 1866.