Haymaking (Bastien-Lepage)

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Haymaking (Les foins) is an oil painting by Jules Bastien-Lepage from 1877. It measures 209 by 225 cm and is in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

The picture shows two peasants resting after hard work in a field. A man lies on the cut grass with a straw hat covering his face, his beard visible. A young woman sits beside him, looking completely exhausted.

The composition looks almost photographic: the horizon is placed high, so most of the image shows grass and haystacks, with only a small strip of sky.

Haymaking was first shown at the Paris Salon in 1878. After the artist's death, it was bought for the Musée du Luxembourg in 1885, later moved to the Louvre in 1929, and finally reached the Musée d'Orsay in 1980.

Critics praised the painting. Émile Zola called Bastien-Lepage the grandson of Millet and Courbet and regarded Haymaking as a naturalist masterpiece. Soviet critic Nina Yarovskaya also praised it as Bastien-Lepage's best work, noting that it departs from idyllic peasant depictions and shows exhausted peasants under the sun, with the woman's posture conveying deep fatigue.