Man With a Hoe depicts a weary agricultural worker with blunt facial features and rustic clothing taking a moment of rest as he struggles to clear stones and pernicious weeds from a farm field.

[1] The immediate response from several critics was wrath; Paul Saint-Victor notably wrote, "He lights his lantern and looks for a cretin; he must have searched for a long time before finding his peasant leaning on a hoe...There is no gleam of human intelligence in this animal.

[3] After the initial shock of the new, Man with a Hoe lived a quiet life until the 1880s when it re-emerged as a star of three major French exhibitions including the art show at the 1889 World's Fair in Paris.

American critic Ednah Dow Cheney in 1867, in her consideration of the painting's respect for physical labor and the working class generally, wrote, "It stirs the soul with every great problem of life and thought.

"[9] According to the critic Robert Hughes, Millet's Man With a Hoe, The Gleaners, The Sower, and The Angelus were collectively "the most popular works of art in the new age of mass production, disseminated by millions of engravings, postcards, knickknacks and parodies.