When Millet painted this picture, his portrayal of peasants as worthy of aesthetic representation shocked many art crtitics. Now, millions of pastoral scenes are painted every year. The idea of the pastoral scene is almost universally accepted and loved out of nostalgia for the assumed "emotional honesty" of simpler people. In the context of a national aesthetic governed by Life Magazine, such honesty (meaning non-intentionality and purity of expression) can also be found in a famine or a war, the lights of a decaying city, or the entrails of obsolete technology.

DISASTER

DEATH

CITYSCAPE