Art review Stark scenes of rural toil with undeniable erotic edge

The figures in Jean-François Millet's 1859 painting The Angelus, a French icon that's come to the UK on loan from Paris's Musée d'Orsay, seem extremely odd on close inspection.

- Jonathan Jones

The figures in Jean-François Millet's 1859 painting The Angelus, a French icon that's come to the UK on loan from Paris's Musée d'Orsay, seem extremely odd on close inspection. Their faces are obscure, their bodies intriguing under their shapeless work clothes.

What age are they? How are they related? The man is quite young, his top shirt button loose, although his legs are as stiff as a doll's, inside thick, rough-cut trousers.

It's harder to tell the woman's age because she stands in profile, a breeze pressing her skirt against her legs, as she clasps her hands. They might be a married couple or, as this painting's unlikely fan Salvador Dalí claimed, mother and son.

Their physicality is intense. The phallic prongs of a thick wooden potato fork and wheelbarrow shafts add to the feeling that, now the working day is done and they're saying their prayers, they can finally get to bed. But if they're mother and son? I refer you to Dalí.

I think there's a reason Millet makes