Jean-François Millet

“ Jean François Millet, who lived hard and died poor, is now perhaps the most famous artist of the nineteenth century. His slightest work is fought for by dealers and collectors, and his more important pictures, if they chance to change hands, bring colossal and almost incredible prices. ”

“ This great man must not be confounded with two Jean François Millets who lived years before, and who were not artists at all though painters. Everything about J. F. Millet the Great, is worthy of study. Let the student seize every chance of studying his works, chances which will, alas! be rare enough as many of his best pictures are in America and most of the others in France. His pastels and water-colours are not very good, but his etchings which (reproduced) can be seen in the British Museum, are valuable for strength and power. ”

“ At times he would model things with a bit of clay, or cut the outline of a flower or an animal with his knife on a flat piece of wood. This unexercised talent Francois inherited in a still greater degree. As time went on, he progressed to making little drawings on his own account; and we may be sure the priest and all the good wives of Gruchy had quite settled in their own minds before long that Jean Francois Millet’s hands would be able in time to paint quite a beautiful altar-piece for the village church. ”

“ The artist Millet loved to draw as well as to paint. Black and white pictures had their charm for him as truly as those in color. Indeed, he once said that "tone," which is the most important part of color, can be perfectly expressed in black and white. It is therefore not strange that he made many drawings. Some of these, like the Knitting Lesson and the Woman Feeding Hens, were, as we have seen, studies for paintings. The picture called Filling the Water-Bottles was, on the other hand, a charcoal drawing, corresponding to no similar painting. It is in itself a finished work of art. ”

“ The grandmother urged his return: "My François," she said, "we must accept the will of God. Thy father, my son, Jean-Louis, said that you were to be a painter; obey him, and go back to Cherbourg."
Millet did not need persuasion from his family. Friends in Cherbourg urged him to come back, promised him commissions, and assured him a place in the studio of Langlois, a painter of a higher grade than Mouchel, who had recently set up his easel in the town. Once more established at Cherbourg Millet continued (p. 269) his studies after the same easy fashion with Langlois as with his former master. ”

“ Jean Francois Millet. Souvenirs de Barbizon. 1876. Veuve A. Cadart. (Comprising : Millet chez lui ; Notice sur J. F. Millet, and a catalogue of the works that were in Millet's studio at his death.)
Edward Wheelwright. Recollections of Millet. (Atlantic Monthly. September 1876. Reproduced in French in the Revue Britannique, November 1876, without the author's name.)
Philippe Burty. Maîtres et petits - maîtres. 1877. Charpentier. André Michel. J. F. Millet et I' exposition de son œuvre a l'Ecole des Beaux Arts. (Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1887.)
André Michel. Notes sur l'art moderne. 1896. ”

“ How, indeed, could beings devoid of any ideal explain a history that is so frequently and so conspicuously full of idealism? The life of Millet would have satisfied him better; in it, he would have recognised types of some of those men who make the real greatness of a nation and often impart to its doings a character of heroism.
Strong bodily and moral health, absolute purity of conduct, strong religious faith and seriousness of mind distinguished all Millet's relatives. His father, Jean Louis Nicolas, was precentor of the parish church ”

“ Their way lies across the plain whose level stretch is unbroken by fences or buildings. In the distance men may be seen loading a wagon with hay. The sheep still keep on nibbling as they go, and their progress is slow. The shepherdess takes time to stop and rest now and then, propping her staff in front of her while she picks up a stitch dropped in her knitting. There is a sense of perfect stillness in the air, that calm silence of the fields, which Millet once said was the gayest thing he knew in nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By-and-by, when the time came for Francois to choose a trade, he being then a big lad of about nineteen, it was suggested to his father that young Millet might really make a regular painter—that is to say, an artist. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ Millet, like Rousseau, was an admirer of the grandeur and richness of nature, but he was more deeply moved by another sentiment. In his mind it was man who played the principal part, and to his eyes the landscape was the stage on which the drama of humanity was represented. The continued labor which the life of man demands, his sufferings, his pains as well as his joys, his pleasures, his weariness, his rest, his peace - these were the conditions that appealed most strongly to François's imagination, and it was these which he felt himself driven to paint. ”

“ Returning to Paris with his wife, he remained there until 1849, when he went to Barbizon "for a time," which was prolonged to twenty-seven years.
In all the years preceding his final return to the country, Millet was apparently undecided as to the definite character of his work. Out of place in a city, more or less influenced by his comrades in art, and forced to follow in a degree the dictation of necessity in the choice of subject, as his brush was his only resource and his family constantly increasing, his work of this period is always tentative. ”

“ Never was a leaf more powerless before the wind than was Millet in the worldly entanglements that pursued him to his latest breath.
“I will begin a picture for you at once with the greatest ardor,” he wrote to Ruel. When he had finished it, it was taken by his son François to the wharf, where the little steamer lay that was to carry it to Southampton, while the father went to the custom-house to get a permit. ”

“ Of the six wood-engravings drawn by Millet and cut by his brothers, three are represented in the collection.
Millet was a thoughtful artist, to whom the spirit of things was at least as important as their visual aspect. His deep and sincere sympathy with the life of the peasant, to whose class he himself belonged, determined to a large extent his choice of subject. But Millet never descended to anecdotal trivialities; he avoided the pale sentimentality of such a painter as Jules Breton. His thought, like his technique, was virile, positive, honest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the strength of this appeal, the council of Cherbourg agreed to allow Millet an annuity of four hundred francs, equal to eighty dollars. With this small sum, and the addition of two hundred francs given him at parting by his mother and grandmother, making one hundred and twenty dollars in all, Millet left his quiet life in Normandy behind him and set out for Paris, where, as his biographer, Sensier, says, he was to pass as a captive the richest years of his life. ”

“ He saw in it a symbol of a father exhausting himself in silence for the life of his family. "Yes, Millet works for those who belong to him," he said, "he exhausts himself like a tree that produces too much blossom and fruit; he wears himself out to keep his children alive. ”

“ In 1860 he painted, and in 1861 exhibited at the Salon, the Woman feeding her Child, La Becqueé, [9] the Woman carrying Pails, Waiting, and Sheep-shearing, in which he had tried, he says, "to paint a happy place where life is kind amid its roughness, a pure air and a fine August day." In spite of their charm, these pictures gave rise to violent debates. Millet's old admirers, Théophile Gautier and Paul de St Victor, had become his fiercest enemies. ”

“ The second drawing was of a man giving bread to a beggar at his door. When the artist (Mouchel) saw these drawings he was amazed, and at first would not believe Millet had drawn them himself. He said that Millet would surely be a great painter. This decided the matter, and Millet became Mouchel’s pupil.
Millet studied with the artist not quite two 28months when his father died, and he was obliged to return home to take his father’s place on the farm as best he could. But the people of the village thought it was too bad for him to give up his painting, and they determined to help him. ”

“ This poignantly human note is observable in almost every work Millet wrought; his passionate sympathy with his fellow-man is the keynote of his art. The wood-cutter in his arduous toil, the shepherd in his solitariness, the labourer turning the soil with unvarying and laborious monotony, the mother caring for her children—all carry the same message for him of that strange and incomprehensible mingling of joy and sadness we call life. ”

“ In France, the general tastes of the people are far more artistic than with us; and the number of painters who find work for their brushes in Paris is something immensely greater than the number in our own smoky, money-making London. So there was nothing very remarkable, from a French point of view, in the idea of the young peasant turning for a livelihood to the profession of an artist. But Millet's father was a sober and austere man, a person of great dignity and solemnity, who decided to put his son's powers to the test in a very regular and critical fashion. ”

“ His critics urged him to paint, instead, some beautiful girl or fine-looking man from the village or city. To this he replied: “Beauty does not dwell in the face; it radiates forth from the whole figure and appears in the suitableness of the action to the subject. Your pretty peasants would be ill suited for picking up wood, for gleaning in the fields of August, for drawing water from a well. Beauty is expression.”
In spite of the fact that he could barely earn a living in Paris, Millet remained there many years. ”

“ The wonderful capacity of Millet for portraying action is demonstrated to the full in this canvas. Hard, unremitting toil is the theme Millet has wished to bring before us. The heat is intense, but the work goes on with unrelaxing vigour. The masculine energy of the two bending figures are in striking contrast with the figure of the young girl on the left of the picture. The artist shows that he was quite capable of infusing charm into his peasant studies as well as bringing the brutalising aspect of their labour before the spectator. ”

“ No two countries are alike in atmospheric effect, and it is necessary, therefore, in order to appreciate an artist to the full, to have studied the country he has chosen to depict. The outlines of the landscape, the very shape of the trees, the colour imparted by sunshine and clouds, differ materially in various districts, and consequently it behoves one to exercise caution before condemning this or that effect as being untrue to nature.
It may safely be said that as a painter, purely and simply, Millet will never occupy a very high position in the world of art. ”

“ The mother very likely had to hitch herself up with the donkey, or the big dog, after the fashion of these people, as she helped draw loads about the field. Who can look for Breton's ideal stage peasants from Millet who knew the truth as he saw it every day?
Many years after his life in the Gruchy home, Millet painted the portrait of the grandmother whom he had loved so much that he cried out: "I wish to paint her soul!" No one could desire a better reward than such a tribute.
Millet had an uncle who was a priest and he did what he could to give the boy a start in learning. ”

“ Millet died somewhat suddenly in 1875. Strong and hearty as he was, even the sturdy health of the Norman peasant had been undermined by the long hardships of his early struggles, and his constitution gave way at last with comparative rapidity. Still, he had lived long enough to see his fame established, to enjoy ten years of ease and honour, and to find his work cordially admired by all those for whose admiration he could have cared to make an effort. After his death, the pictures and unfinished sketches in his studio were sold for 321,000 francs, a little less than 13,000 pounds. ”

“ Millet was at a loss what to do for bread. His mind ran back continually to his rural life at Gruchy. "What if I should paint men mowing or winnowing?" he said to Marolles; "their movements are picturesque!" "You could not sell them," replied his friend. "Well, then, what do you say to fauns and dryads?" "Who in Paris cares for fauns and dryads?" "What shall I do, then?" said Millet in despair. "What does the public like?" "It likes Boucher's Cupids, Watteau's Pastorals, nudities, anecdotes, and copies of the past." It was hard for Millet, but hunger drove him. ”