Millet, L'Angelus

we're the Musee d'Orsay and we're looking at a painting by me a which is called line Angeles it's a really famous painter in the 19th century right and into the early 20th century when very high sums were paid for it but it's clearly not the star at the musee d'orsay anymore it's a very sentimental scene it is and it's a relatively small painting showing to people who have stopped to pray they've heard the bells of the church that we can see in the distance and they've stopped for a daily prayer called the Angelus which commemorates the Annunciation and although it may seem like a kind of religious painting or a scene of people being religious mostly I think for me a it was a memory of his childhood the way in which his grandmother would stop everyone when they were doing their weeding or planting so that they could do their evening prayers right and so the man of the woman has clearly stopped their work man holds his hat in his hand and looks down women also looks down holding her hands to her chest their tools are all around them and the Sun sets in the distance the horizon is rather high it's about the land and about values and what's right what's important is hard work and remembering God and our place in the universe it's a very moralizing image this is an image that is sort of cutting away all of the artificial of the city and looking for these sort of inherent moral values that are at the heart of what the French hold as important and as you said monumental in the way that they stand against the horizon line they're backlit the sky is quite bright silhouetted right and that innocence makes it hard to read their faces they become everyman and even though this is not a painting of a religious subject it's very 19th century in that it's a painting of people who are being religious as though he seems like it's a little bit hard in the 19th century to use Christian iconography in the usual way and instead we find religious experiences and sunsets Mia had an important kind of appetite that existed he had found a solution locating if not God at least the reverence God here in the modern world