''The Wheat Sifters'' ( French: ''Les Cribleuses de Blé'') is an

oil-on-canvas Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

created in 1854 by the French Realist painter

Gustave Courbet Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and ...

. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1855 in Paris, then in 1861 at the ninth exhibition of the Society of Friends of the Art of Nantes, which then bought the painting for the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes. The young women in the painting are probably the two sisters of Courbet: Zoe (in the center) and Juliet (seated). The boy could be Désiré Binet, the illegitimate son of the painter.

References

1854 paintings Paintings by Gustave Courbet Paintings in the Musée d'Arts de Nantes {{19C-painting-stub