The Wheat Sifters

The Wheat Sifters (Les Cribleuses de Blé) is an oil-on-canvas painting created in 1854 by the French Realist painter Gustave Courbet.

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.