This picture is from a series depicting the four seasons commissioned in 1868 by the industrialist Frederick Hartmann. Millet completed Spring in 1873 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris); by the spring of 1874, he reported that Summer: Buckwheat Harvest (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Haystacks: Autumn were almost finished. Winter: The Woodgatherers (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff) was incomplete at the time of his death.

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