After Millet — The Diggers

Yvonne (copyist, Tokyo, 1980), after Jean-François Millet

The Work

This is a copy after Millet's diggers composition, painted in Tokyo in October 1980 by an artist known only as Yvonne, as recorded in her own hand on the reverse of the canvas: "Original by Millet. 1850. Painted by Yvonne. Tokyo, October 1980." The canvas is a standard French "F8" size (46 x 38cm), matching the artwork's dimensions — a detail suggesting a deliberate, considered copy rather than an improvised exercise. Little else is known of Yvonne, but copying the masters was, and remains, a recognised and respected way for artists to study technique, tone, and composition — a tradition this piece belongs to.

Year: 1980
Medium: Oil on canvas
Image size: 460 mm x 380 mm
Framed size: 590 mm x 515 mm
Catalogue: 0028

Provenance

I found this piece on Facebook Marketplace and thought it was lovely — I do love a traditional oil.

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Framing

It came to me already in this frame: an ornate carved gilt frame with a warm gold-bronze patina, showing genuine age, with some paint and gesso loss and small chips at the corners. The design carries a foliate scroll pattern on the outer moulding and a rope-twist inner sight edge — a traditional French presentation style entirely in keeping with the subject.

About Yvonne (copyist, Tokyo, 1980), after Jean-François Millet

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) was a French painter and a founding figure of the Barbizon School, best known for his dignified, unsentimental depictions of peasant labour — works like The Gleaners and The Angelus remain among the most recognised images in Western art. Millet returned repeatedly to the subject of labourers turning and digging soil throughout the 1850s and 1860s, developing the theme through drawings, an etching, and a major pastel now held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The composition became one of his most studied and copied works — Vincent van Gogh, deeply influenced by Millet, painted his own versions of the same subject decades later.