Peasant Women with Brushwood is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Jean-François Millet, created c. 1852.
They are dressed in homespun clothes and wear clogs, walking along a forest road while carrying huge bundles of brushwood on their backs.
After the death of the owner, the painting, like all the works from his collection, was bequeathed to the Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts [ru] and became part of the Kushelev gallery; in 1922 it was transferred to the State Hermitage, in Saint Petersburg.
[1] A preparatory drawing by Millet in pencil and gouache (34.3 × 27.6 cm) is known; it dates from 1858 and is a fully developed sketch of the figures of the two peasant women.
In March 1920 it was sold in New York, to a certain Seaman, then after changing several owners, since November 1962 it has been in the collection of the banker Robert Lehman.