The painting depicts two peasants bowing in a field over a basket of potatoes to say a prayer, the Angelus, that together with the ringing of the bell from the church on the horizon marks the end of a day's work.

[1] More in the realm of artistic speculation or imagination rather than historical reality, François Millet's painting—as with many other art history examples or specific artworks—is the subject of an elaborate anecdotal claim.

It is told that Salvador Dalí saw a print of this painting in his school and insisted that this was a funeral scene, not a prayer ritual and that the couple were portrayed praying and mourning over their dead infant.

Although this was an unpopular view, at his insistence the Louvre X-rayed the painting, showing a small painted-over geometric shape strikingly similar to a coffin by the basket.

According to Karine Huguenaud, "There is, however, no religious message to the painting: Millet was simply concerned with portraying a ritualised moment of meditation taking place as the dusk rolls in.

It is clearly a masterpiece, but faced with these two peasants, whose work is interrupted by prayer, everyone thinks they can hear the nearby church bell tolling, and in the end, the constant ringing just became tiresome".

[2] With reference to the Musée d'Orsay, the provenance of the work is as follows; although some events are missing, such as the Brussels show in 1874:[5] A month after the Secretan sale, The Gleaners was sold for 300,000 francs, and the contrast between the auction prices of Millet's paintings on the art market and the value of Millet's estate for his surviving family led to the droit de suite (French for "right to follow"), a French law that compensates artists or their heirs when artworks are resold.

[8] In 2018, Gil Baillie[9] wrote that The Angelus incorporates a sensibility of the sacramental that made reproductions of the painting especially popular in Western Europe throughout much of the remainder of the 19th century.

He incorporates a story that illustrates the role of imagination in the appeal of the image: "When his lifelong friend and agent Alfred Sensier first saw the painting on Millet’s easel, the artist asked: 'Well, what do you think of it?'