The Sower is Millet's most famous theme and one he repeated several times between 1850 and 1870. Two other versions precede the museum's canvas. This one dates from the 1850s and may have been left unfinished. In fact, the birds and the plow team in the background may have been added by someone else. Overall, the thin glazes of color, typical of Millet's preliminary stage of execution, would have been covered with denser, heavily worked paint to make a finished work.

The power of the image derives from the bold pose of the peasant and his dramatic position against a hillside lit by fading sunset. These simple allusions to day, night, and the seasons place the human act of sowing within the timeless cycles of nature. For Millet, the subject expressed profound personal and religious beliefs. However, his first version (now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) aroused a storm of controversy when it appeared in the 1850 Paris Salon. Viewers were shocked by Millet's heroic treatment of a lowly peasant at a time when the situation of the French rural poor was degrading, and socialism threatened bourgeois society.