Ferme du Couvent

The Angelus is one of the most reproduced images in the history of art. It was knocked down for 553,000 francs on 1 July 1889 at the Secrétan sale, after a bidding war between the Louvre and the American Art Association, and left for the United States — bought back the following year by Alfred Chauchard, who bequeathed it to the State. It entered public collections only in 1910. It hangs today in the Musée d'Orsay. What few visitors realise is that it was painted a few hundred metres from the Grande Rue, in this flat and ordinary plain that most people cross without stopping on the way to Chailly. The two figures — the man and the woman, heads bowed over turned earth — were real farm workers, working these actual fields.