Pierre Millet

“ He chose the subjects of his pictures from among the familiar objects of the life in which he had been brought up, and from the work that he himself had performed; not that he wished to delineate misery, but that he sympathized with the laborious peasant life. To him it seemed the most natural condition of man, and he knew by experience that the workers of the fields do not continually grumble at their occupation; that even in many instances they enjoy it, and know how to mingle amusements with their labor. ”

“ At times some of the guests would give us excellent music. All felt at ease at Rousseau's home, he was so affable and kind to every one. One could not be near him and not grow fond of him. After his departure we found it indeed very lonely, and Barbizon then resumed its true rustic character. No more city people, no more artists; we saw henceforth only peasants. But François did not wholly regret this isolation of several months. ”

“ Or he represents a new-born lamb, which the shepherdess carries in her apron, the legs of the newly born being still too weak to walk to the sheepfold. The ewe follows her lamb, never taking her eyes from it, and has the anxious air of a mother trembling with love and tenderness for the safety of her little one. Thus he shows us the sentiment of love as it exists in nature, even among the animals.
He admired order and care in the mother of a family. He has never painted a peasant with clothes torn. ”

“ François made me understand that the study of form is accomplished quite as well with crayon as with clay or any other material. With crayon one makes a semblance of the form by light and shade; with clay is made a reality, a true relief. The end is the same — the study of form. It is the means only which differ.
After supper François often went to take a walk on the plain or in the forest. He was fond of watching the beautiful evening effects which are produced on the plain, and although he greatly admired the forest, his preference was for the plain. ”

“ Whether he saw fields of wheat or of clover; a woman leading her cows by a rope to pasture them in the fields; a herd of cows belonging to a large farm; a shepherd keeping his sheep with the aid of his dogs, or putting himself at the head of the flock, and the dogs keeping the procession in order, watching meanwhile to see that none remained behind or went astray from the others — all these subjects fascinated him, and kept him constantly in an attitude of observation, of which he never tired. ”

“ His peasant is always honest and respectable in his rustic but orderly ways, and never has a wicked or trivial air. He never made a portrait of an individual peasant. He tried to paint a type which would characterize the man of the fields.
I have often heard him criticized for invariably choosing plain people as the subjects of his pictures, when he could just as well have selected pretty faces, and thus have given his works a better chance of selling. From a commercial point of view such criticisms, perhaps, were correct, but he chose above all to make a work of art. ”

“ Continuing our walk, we came upon other objects of artistic interest. These were people binding the wheat into sheaves, and others loading the carts, and transporting the sheaves to the place where they were piling them in huge stacks. François watched this with great eagerness, saying to me: "See the grand movements of the men who lift the sheaves on their pitchforks, to give them to those who are on the stacks. It is astonishing, toward the approach of night, how grand everything on the plain appears, especially when we see figures thrown out against the sky. ”

“ Very strong black coffee, free from adulteration, was a necessity to him.
He never could get such coffee except at home or at the houses of his friends. If taken ill when in Paris, he would try to get a cup of coffee at those places which made a specialty of it; but he never could find a place where it was pure. There was always chicory or something else mixed with it, and it would not produce the desired effect. Then he had to go about suffering from headache, and it often happened that he was obliged to return to his quarters and to go to bed till the next day. ”

“ In places one sees great heaps of rocks of sandstone formation piled one above the other on the slope of the hills, as if large masses of water formerly had rushed through all this country, loosening the immense rocks, and heaping them one upon the other. One peculiarity of these rocks is that many of them are formed like great living monsters. When we went into the forest toward nightfall François was always deeply moved. ”

“ His subjects always impress one with his great love for humanity, and are not presented to excite pity on the part of the beholder. If he represents a mother showing her daughter how to sew or knit, it is always with the affection and tenderness of a mother. ”

“ In this way he obtained many valuable hints, for the black glass represents objects in a gamut, or scale, a little darker than they naturally are, and this is what one is obliged to do in painting, because, with the colors at one's disposal, actual light cannot be rendered exactly as it is in nature. ”

“ He was fond of staying at home, and rarely made visits to any one excepting Rousseau when the latter was at Barbizon. One trouble — headache — followed him throughout his life, causing him many interruptions and much suffering. The pain was often so severe as to forbid working at least one or two days of each week. It was painful to watch his struggles against this frightful headache at a moment when he was actually obliged to finish his work. He would try to resist the evil, and forced himself to continue in order to complete a painting ”

“ Because he chose his subjects among the workers, and showed them in their natural ways and work, political motives have sometimes been attributed to him. It has been said that he wished to show the miseries of the poor and to excite hatred toward the rich. ”