At first, the painting was interpreted as a political statement, with Millet viewed as a socialist in solidarity with the workers. The painting triggered a rush of patriotic fervour when the Louvre tried to buy it in 1889, and was vandalized by a madman in 1932. [2]

More in the realm of artistic speculation or imagination rather than historical reality, François Millet's painting—as with many other art history examples or specific artworks—is the subject of an elaborate anecdotal claim. It is told that Salvador Dalí saw a print of this painting in his school and insisted that this was a funeral scene, not a prayer ritual and that the couple were portrayed praying and mourning over their dead infant. Although this was an unpopular view, at his insistence the Louvre X-rayed the painting, showing a small painted-over geometric shape strikingly similar to a coffin by the basket. [3] Millet originally painted a burial – perhaps a rural version of Courbet's famous painting A Burial at Ornans (1850) – but then converted it to a recitation of the Angelus, complete with the visible church bell tower. A month after the Secretan sale, The Gleaners was sold for 300,000 francs, and the contrast between the auction prices of Millet's paintings on the art market and the value of Millet's estate for his surviving family led to the droit de suite ( French for "right to follow"), a French law that compensates artists or their heirs when artworks are resold.Chauchard bequest of 1906 to the French State; formally accepted 15 January 1910 into the permanent collection of the musée du Louvre, Paris; collection American Art Association, New York; sale 1890 to the Paris collector and philanthropist, Hippolyte François Alfred Chauchard (1821–1909), for 750,000 fr.;

Millet was commissioned by the American would-be painter and art collector Thomas Gold Appleton, who never came to collect it. The painting is famous today for driving the prices for artworks of the Barbizon school up to record amounts in the late 19th century. Angelus Shoe Polish was not even a dream when the young Greek immigrant Paul T. Angelos arrived at Ellis Island in 1907. Making his way to Chicago, Paul shined shoes and saved enough money to go to Los Angeles where he opened his own shine stand. The imagery of The Angelus with peasants praying was a popular sentimental 19th-century religious subject. Generations later, Salvador Dalí had seen a reproduction of it on the wall of his childhood school and claimed to have been spooked by the painting. He felt the basket looked like the coffin of a child and the woman looked like a praying mantis. He was inspired to create his paranoiac-critical paintings The Architectonic Angelus of Millet and Gala and the Angelus of Millet Preceding the Imminent Arrival of the Conical Anamorphoses in 1933. These were followed two years later by a similar pair of paintings which included a partial reproduction of Millet's The Angelus, called The Angelus of Gala and Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus. In 1938, he published a book Le Mythe tragique de l'Angélus de Millet. [8] Paint leather furniture such as sofas, armchairs, chairs, stools, and more in the colour that you want. Would you like to transform a two-seater sofa with our leather paint? Four bottles of 118 ml of leather paint should be enough. For a dining room chair, you normally need just one 118 ml bottle. At leatherpaint.co.uk, you have an easy and inexpensive solution when you want to change the colour of a new chair or other furniture. Visit our user manual for instructions on how to achieve the best results. Leather paint colours It was not long before the plant demanded their full time attention and so the brothers sold their shoe shine stands and devoted all their energies into making shoe polish. Some of the family worked in the plant while others took to the road where they often worked in the repair shops shining shoes to demonstrate the quality of the Angelus products.Millet said: "The idea for The Angelus came to me because I remembered that my grandmother, hearing the church bell ringing while we were working in the fields, always made us stop work to say the Angelus prayer for the poor departed." [2] Completed between 1857 and 1859, it is an oil painting on canvas. When Appleton failed to take possession, Millet added a steeple and changed the initial title of the work, Prayer for the Potato Crop, to The Angelus. In Jean-Pierre Melville's French drama film Léon Morin, Priest (1961) there is a scene in which a conversation between the atheist French widow Barny ( Emmanuelle Riva) and the priest Léon Morin ( Jean-Paul Belmondo) is interrupted by the sound of church bells. Barny in her first-person narration states, "The Angelus rang. He'd have to enact a scene from a Millet painting or not answer the call of the church. Appear ridiculous or inadequate." Morin proceeds to pray the Angelus in front of Barny.