Romain Rolland

“ It is curious to notice how nature sometimes tries her hand on the father before she succeeds in evolving the genius that will be realised in the son. Jean Louis Nicolas was a gentle, meditative man who had vague artistic instincts. He tried to model in clay and to carve in wood; he liked to observe animals, plants and people, and it was he who first showed François the beauty of the fields. ”

“ Delaroche, who had no genius at all but a great deal of intelligence and an intuition of genius, treated him with a mixture of esteem and hostility. Sometimes he would tell him harshly that he needed to be "ruled with a rod of iron," sometimes he would look at his work, sigh and go away without saying anything or giving any sort of advice; but when Millet left his studio he made endeavours to bring him back, saying to him: "You are not like everybody else." Millet worked his best and drew obediently from the antique ”

“ He drew from it his sanity of mind, his balance and that calm manliness which detesting sentimentality, simper and inflation, speaks simply, soberly and strongly. Much deeper than the impressions received from books must have been those made upon the boy Millet by nature. ”

“ Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night in which it was said, 'There is a man child conceived.' It was thus that I accosted Paris, not cursing it, but in terror at understanding nothing of its material and spiritual life. ”

“ The stupefied painter said to the father: "You will be damned for having kept him back so long, for there is the stuff of a great artist in your boy." It was only from that day that Millet's artistic education began. He was then over twenty years of age.
He was hardly established at Cherbourg when his father fell ill of a brain fever; he returned hurriedly to the village, where he arrived in time to be present at the death-bed of his father, who died without recognising him (November 1835) . ”

“ The boy Millet devoured this strong intellectual food. He had an especial passion for the Bible, which he read in Latin, and for Virgil, beloved by many other great French painters of the period: Delacroix, Corot and Rousseau. The Bucolics and the Georgics enchanted him. He tells us himself that when he came to the line: "It is the hour when the great shadows seek the plain" ”

“ Now your brothers are growing up and I will not keep you from learning what you wish so much to know." They went together to Cherbourg to see a painter of the school of David, called Mouchel, an artist of no great distinction but a peasant at heart. Millet showed him two drawings of his own invention: one represented two shepherds, the other a man coming out of a house at night and distributing loaves, with these words of St Luke: "Et si non dabit illi surgeus eo quod amicus ejus sit, propter improbitatem tamen ejus surget et dabit illi quotquot habet necessarios." ”

“ He also made a couple of chalk drawings in which the sentiment is much more high flown, and which still exist; in one of them Liberty is to be seen dragging kings by the hair of the head, in the other victoriously brandishing her spear. ”

“ As soon as he was old enough to help his father and mother he worked with them in the fields, mowing, making hay, winnowing, ploughing, manuring, sowing, and so taking part personally in all those acts of rustic life, the poetic and mysterious grandeur of which he was afterwards to express. ”