This gentle and luminous painting by Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau captures a moment of rural tranquility as a young woman scatters feed for a flock of chickens. Clothed in a red skirt and indigo apron, she gazes downward with serene grace, embodying the 19th-century ideal of peasant beauty and virtue. Gardner’s mastery of soft realism and delicate detail is evident in the lifelike feathers, fabric folds, and natural light filtering across the farmyard. As the wife of famed artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, she developed her own celebrated career, often portraying domestic and pastoral scenes with poetic tenderness.