Romain Rolland

“ When he had to leave home to go to Paris his grandmother, who had a great influence upon his mind, said to him: "I would rather see you dead than apostate and unfaithful to God's commands." At a later time when he had begun to make his way in Paris she reminded him again: "Remember, my François, that you were a Christian before you were a painter; do not sacrifice to things indecent. . . . Paint for eternity, and think that the trump which will call to judgment is on the eve of sounding." These religious admonitions were in complete accord with Millet's feelings. ”

“ He thought with Corot that "the mission of art is a mission of love, not of hate, and that, when it presents the sufferings of the poor, it should not aim at exciting envy towards the wealthy classes." He had no feeling of enmity to the rich; but much rather of compassion. "Poor little prince!" said he pityingly, one day when the glories of the Prince Imperial's christening were described to him. Nor did his love of the country lead him into any illusions as to the faults of the peasants. ”

“ "What has art to do with those things? Art will never come except from some little disregarded corner where some isolated man is studying the mysteries of nature, fully assured that the answer which he finds and which is good for him is good also for humanity, whatever may be the number of succeeding generations." ”

“ Work—His Place in French Art
The personality of Millet is a surprising one in the France of the nineteenth century. He seems to be a man belonging to another time, another race, a different form of thought. In French art he is a solitary, almost an alien. He was equally misunderstood by his admirers and his detractors. The former hailed him as the bold and truthful interpreter of the new democracy. The latter regarded him as a declaiming socialist who set before the dominating middle classes a melodramatic picture of the suffering workers. ”

“ A peasant I was born, a peasant I will die. I will stay on my own soil without yielding so much as the breadth of a wooden shoe." Finally, before beginning to study the life and work of Millet, I have to make one observation which especially concerns an English public. It is that this great peasant painter, the faithful representative in contemporary art of the French people, is by his temperament and his Biblical spirit more akin to the intellectual oligarchy of England or America than to that of France. ”

“ Every man is doomed to bodily punishment. 'In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread' was written ages ago: an immovable fate that will never change" (1854) . We see that there is no protest here; no desire to make life better. Life is sad but Millet loves it as it is. It might almost be said that if sadness did not exist, Millet would have made it afresh, so singular is the charm which it had for him. "I would on no account be deprived of winter," he says somewhere. "Oh! sadness of the fields and woods, not to behold you would be too great a loss!" ”

“ "You are sitting under the trees," he wrote in 1851, "feeling all the ease, all the tranquillity that can possibly be enjoyed; you see some poor figure laden with a faggot come turning out of some little path. The unexpected and always striking way in which this figure appears to you carries your mind instantly to the sadness of human life. . . .
'Quel plaisir a-t-il eu depuis qu'il est au monde?
En est-il un plus pauvre en la machine ronde?' [1]
La Fontaine, 'Death and the Woodcutter.' ... In tilled lands you see these figures digging and delving. ”

“ If one would produce true and natural art, one must avoid the theatre." More energetically still did he protest against the claim made by his friends and his enemies to reckon him with the socialist camp. Like many other French artists who lived at the time of the 1848 Revolution, he felt, naturally enough, a fraternal sympathy that drew him towards the people; but it should be noted that neither Millet nor, with the exception of Courbet, any of the greatest among these painters joined in the popular demands. ”

“ I have seen a little of the people belonging to that particular sphere and have become convinced that by dint of trying to assume the personality of someone else they cease to know their own, that they come to speak only according to their parts, and that they lose truth, common sense and the simple feelings of plastic art. ”

“ It is easily conceivable that such a view did not occur to the chosen minds of France. But the same reasons that set Millet apart from the chosen set him closer to the people, of whom he is almost the sole interpreter. It may be said that French art has remained no less aristocratic than in the seventeenth century, and that nothing links it to the main body of the nation. ”

“ Far from desiring to paint men in revolt marching towards emancipation and progress, he writes that he wishes "the beings whom he represents to have an appearance of being bound to their position so that it should be impossible to imagine them having an idea of being anything different." ”

“ It may be said that sorrow was his best friend, and gave him an austere delight. "Art is not a diversion," he wrote once. "It is a conflict, a complication of wheels in which one is crushed. I am not a philosopher. ”

“ These masters are like mesmerists." And in another place, "When I saw Michael Angelo's drawing that represents a man in a swoon, the expression of the relaxed muscles, the planes and reliefs of that face sinking under bodily suffering, gave me quite a succession of sensations. ”

“ When certain persons took the trouble to explain in a most literary and elaborate manner the expression of his Peasants carrying home a calf born in the fields, he remarked with ironical common sense that "the expression of two men carrying something on a hand-barrow is determined by the weight hanging at the end of their arms. ”

“ But that which is exceptional in him and distinguishes him from others is the tranquillity with which he accepts his ill-fortune, as a matter of necessity, a superior and beneficent fate. Human folly, spite and egoism never disturb his admirable calm. "Yes, there are bad people," he says simply, "but there are good ones, and one good makes up to us for many bad. ”

“ If the weight be equal, whether they are carrying the ark of the temple or a calf, a nugget of gold or a stone, they will be subject to the law of the weight and their expression can indicate nothing but that weight. ”

“ He does not believe in progress; or he believes only in technical progress, which has nothing to do with the supposed social or moral progress. "What everyone ought to do," said he in 1854, "is to seek progress, in his own profession. ”

“ In 1857, the year of the Gleaners, poverty would have driven him to suicide, but that his conscience shrank in horror from the thought. In 1859, the year of the Angelus, he writes, in midwinter: "We only have wood for two or three days and do not know how to get any more. ”