Léon Augustin LHERMITTE (Mont-Saint-Père, 1844 - Paris, 1925). In the fields. Ink, wash and gouache highlights on paper signed lower right. Top. : 9 cm - Width : 16 cm (at sight) In the vein of Jean-François Millet, Léon Lhermitte depicts with great sensitivity this rural France he knows well. The "Paie des Moissonneurs", presented in 1882 and very well received by the critics, was a great success which earned him the nickname of "painter of harvesters". The mutations of the industrial revolution led painters to look back with nostalgia on these pastoral figures, intangible symbols of a thousand-year-old France.