The Nut Gatherers

The Nut Gatherers (Les Noisettes, literally The Hazelnuts) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, dated 1882; it is in the Detroit Institute of Arts, where it is one of the museum's most popular works.

Bouguereau, trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and winner of the Prix de Rome in 1850, exhibited at the Paris Salon throughout his career. By the end of the 1850s he was turning away from history painting and lengthy commissions towards more personal pictures with realistic, rustic themes. In 1882, the year of this canvas, he bought a house in his native La Rochelle as a permanent summer base, beginning paintings there and finishing them in his Paris studio.

Two barefoot girls in peasant dress lie on the grass of a shady glade, one propped on her elbows and gazing out of the picture, the other holding a handful of hazelnuts. The Detroit Institute of Arts reads the scene as an image of innocence: the fresh faces, smooth skin and bare feet recall the vulnerability of youth and the world of simple pleasures and close friendship that comes before adult responsibilities. Bouguereau's handling of skin, hands and feet, built up from detailed studies, was particularly admired in his lifetime.

The canvas measures about 87.6 × 133 cm. Bouguereau was popular in the United States as well as in France, and this picture reached an American collection within a few years of being painted: it was bought by James E. Scripps of Detroit at the New York sale of the Mary Morgan collection in March 1886. It passed by descent to William E. Scripps, and the Scripps family gave it to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1954.