Young Peasant Girl near a Haystack

The Swiss-born Bodmer is best known for his illustrations documenting a two-year expedition to the American West undertaken in 1832 with an aristocratic German explorer known as Prince Max. After returning from the United States, Bodmer settled in Barbizon, where he painted, etched, and photographed the forest and those who frequented it, and where he became a mentor to Millet. Here, a young girl in a cloak is shown in a rare moment of respite, walking across a hayed field, fiddling with a bit of straw.