_Jean François Millet_ (French: 1814-1875).
Millet, the peasant painter of France, occupies an important
place in the history of modern art. He heard, as he said, _le
cri de la terre_; and it is this to which he gave expression
in painting. Gambetta well described the characteristics
of Millet and his great contemporary. Rousseau (see 2439)
"revealed the forest; Millet was the painter of the seasons,
the fields, and the peasants." Rousseau and others of the
school were painters of the country, of work-a-day nature;
Millet painted the country-labourers. He did not idealise them,
but he showed, with deep poetry, the dignity of their labour.
This is the spirit of the great pictures--"The Sower," "The
Gleaners," "The Angelus," by which through engravings and other
reproductions he is most widely known. The depth of impression
which those works are found to make was the result of intense
feeling and infinite pains on the part of the artist. "The
Angelus" hung on the point of finish for many months. "I mean,"
he said, "I mean the bells to be heard sounding, and only
natural truth of expression can produce the effect." When a
visitor wanted to buy "The Sheepfold," Millet would not let it
go. "It is not complete," he said; "you cannot hear the dog
bark in there yet." The life and character of Millet were in
accord with his work. He was born of peasant ancestry, and the
boy grew up, as Mr. Henley says, "in an environment of toil,
sincerity, and devoutness. He was fostered upon the Bible and
the great book of nature." "Wake up, my little François," was
his grandmother's morning salutation, "the birds have long
been singing the glory of God." He learned Latin from the
parish priest, and he soon became a student of Virgil. He
followed his father out into the fields, and thenceforward,
as became the eldest boy in a large family, worked hard at
grafting and ploughing, sowing and reaping, scything and
sheaving and planting, and all the many duties of husbandmen.
The life he painted was the life he knew and had led. The
spirit in which he painted it was that of his own reverent, and
somewhat melancholy, temperament. In 1849 he moved from Paris
to Barbizon, on the borders of the Forest of Fontainebleau,
which henceforward was his home. "If you could but see," he
wrote, "how beautiful the forest is! It is so calm, with such
a terrible grandeur, that I feel myself really afraid in it."
"The most joyful thing I know," he wrote in a letter of 1851,
"is the peace, the silence that one enjoys in the woods or in
the tilled lands. One sees a poor, heavily laden creature with
a bundle of faggots advancing from a narrow path in the fields.
The manner in which this figure comes suddenly before one is a
momentary reminder of the fundamental condition of human life
and toil. On the tilled land around, one watches figures hoeing
and digging. One sees how this or that one rises and wipes away
the sweat with the back of his hand. 'In the sweat of thy face
shalt thou eat bread.' Is that merry, enlivening work, as some
people would like to persuade us? And yet it is here that I
find the true humanity, the great poetry."
Like most innovators, Millet had to create the taste by which
he was to be admired; and, though the tale of his struggles and
poverty is sometimes exaggerated, he had many discouragements
and times of difficulty. He was neither "classical" nor
"romantic," and both of those schools of art looked askance at
him. He was born at Gruchy, near Cherbourg; and till the age of
18 lived the life of a peasant. As there were then other sons
to help on the farm, his father, who had long noticed the lad's
artistic talent, took him to Cherbourg, where he received some
instruction under Mouchel and Langlois successively, and where
the Town Council gave him assistance in pursuing his studies.
The death of his father recalled him for a while to the farm;
but in 1837, at the age of 23, he went to Paris and entered the
studio of Delaroche (see 1909). His studio-nickname was "The
Man of the Woods." He tried to sell works in his own style, but
found no market for them, and had to take instead to painting
pastorals, etc., in the manner of Boucher and Watteau. He
married in 1841; his wife died in 1844, and in 1845 he married
again. For a time, he attained a certain vogue as a painter of
the nude, and a classical picture of OEdipus in the Salon
of 1847 attracted some attention. In 1849, as already said,
he settled at Barbizon, and it is from 1850 onwards that his
great works date. They did not sell, or they commanded very
small prices. One was bought by his devoted friend, Rousseau;
for "The Angelus" he received £100. Within 20 years of his
death, it fetched £22,120 at public auction. But the reputation
of Millet grew gradually in his lifetime, and in 1868 he was
made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He is buried beside
Rousseau at Chailly, near Barbizon.
This little "pastoral," in which a girl reclines on a rock, while a
naked child whispers in her ear, belongs to the painter's earlier
period.