In the Auvergne

Jean François Millet · c. 1866–69

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

81.5 × 99.9 cm (32 1/16 × 39 1/4 in.); Framed: 117.5 × 136.9 × 21 cm (46 1/4 × 53 7/8 × 8 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Romanticism

In the Auvergne captures the ancient, volcanic highlands of central France with the quiet grandeur that made Millet one of the defining voices of nineteenth-century landscape painting. Millet is best known for his images of peasant labour, but his landscapes reveal an equally profound attentiveness to the natural world. Painted during the late 1860s, this work reflects the looser, more atmospheric handling he developed in his mature years — broad, unhurried brushwork that conveys the weight of open sky and the slow rhythm of the land beneath it. The Auvergne's treeless plateaux and worn volcanic hills suited his sensibility perfectly: a landscape that felt timeless, worked over by centuries rather than seasons. Millet visited the Auvergne region and responded to its stark, elemental character at a time when he was increasingly moving away from figure-led compositions toward pure landscape, a shift that would influence a generation of painters after him. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made on canvas using traditional oil pigments, carefully matched to Millet's original palette and executed with the same slow layering that gives the source work its depth and atmosphere. It is produced as a single artwork, not a print.