favorite place, Nysoee. On Christmas eve he here formed his beautiful
bas-relief, "Christmas Joys in Heaven," which Oehlenschlaeger
consecrated with a poem. The last birthday of his life was celebrated
here; the performance of one of Holberg's vaudevilles was arranged,
and strangers invited; yet the morning of that day was the homeliest,
when only the family and the author of this memoir, who had written a
merry song for the occasion, which was still wet on the paper, placed
themselves outside the artist's door, each with a pair of tongs, a
gong, or a bottle on which they rubbed a cork, as an accompaniment,
and sung the song as a morning greeting. Thorwaldsen, in his morning
gown, opened the door, laughing; he twirled his black Raphael's cap,
took a pair of tongs himself, and accompanied us, while he danced
round and joined the others in the loud "hurra!"
A charming bas-relief, "The Genius of Poetry," was just completed; it
was the same that Thorwaldsen, on the last day of his life, bequeathed
to Oehlenschlaeger, and said, "It may serve as a medal for you."
On Sunday, March 24, 1844, a small party of friends were assembled at
the residence of Baron Stampe, in Copenhagen. Thorwaldsen was there
and was unusually lively, told stories, and spoke of a journey that he
intended to make to Italy in the course of the summer. Cahn's tragedy
of "Griseldis" was to be performed for the first time that evening at
the theatre. Tragedy was not his favorite subject, but comedy, and
particularly the comedies of Holberg; but it was something new that he
was to see, and it had become a sort of habit with him to pass the
evening in the theatre. About six o'clock, therefore, he went to the
theatre alone. The overture had begun; on entering he shook hands with
a few of his friends, took his usual seat, stood up again to allow one
to pass him, sat down again, bent his head, and was no more! The music
continued. Those nearest to him thought he was only in a swoon, and he
was borne out; but he was numbered with the dead.
The mournful intelligence of his death soon spread through the country
and through all lands; funeral dirges were sung and funeral festivals
were arranged in Berlin and Rome; in the Danish theatre, whence his
soul took its flight to God there was a festival; the place where he
sat was decorated with crape and laurel wreaths, and a poem by Heiberg
was recited, in which his greatness and his death were alluded to.
The day before Thorwaldsen's death the interior of his tomb was
finished, for it was his wish that his remains might rest in the
centre of the court-yard of the museum; it was then walled round, and
he begged that there might be a marble edge around it, and a few
rose-trees and flowers planted on it as his monument. The whole
building, with the rich treasures which he presented to his
fatherland, will be his monument; his works are to be placed in the
rooms of the square building that surrounds the open court-yard, and
which, both internally and externally, are painted in the Pompeian
style. His arrival in the roads of Copenhagen and landing at the
custom-house form the subjects depicted in the compartments under the
windows of one side of the museum. Through centuries to come will
nations wander to Denmark; not allured by our charming green islands,
with their fresh beech-woods alone--no, but to see these works and
this tomb.
There is, however, one place more that the stranger will visit, the
little spot at Nysoee where his _atelier_ stands, and where the tree
bends its branches over the canal to the solitary swan which he fed.
The name of Thorwaldsen will be remembered in England by his statues
of Jason and Byron; in Switzerland, by his "recumbent lion;" in
Roeskilde, by his figure of Christian the Fourth. It will live in
every breast in which a love of art is enkindled.
JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET[6]
[Footnote 6: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
By CLARENCE COOK
(1814-1875)
[Illustration: Jean-Francois Millet.]
We read that on one occasion, when a picture by some Dutch artist,
representing peasants at their sports, was shown to Louis XIV., he
angrily exclaimed, "Take away those vermin!" Such subjects had never
been chosen by French artists, nor indeed had they been seen anywhere
in Europe before the Dutch artists began to paint them in the
seventeenth century. The Italian painters of the early and the later
Renaissance, working almost exclusively for the churches, or for the
palaces of pleasure-loving princes, did not consider the peasant or
the laboring man, by himself, a proper subject for his art. If he were
introduced at any time into picture or bas-relief, it was only as a
necessary actor in some religious story, such as "The Adoration of the
Shepherds," or in the representations of the months or the seasons, as
in the Fountain of the Public Square at Perugia, where we see the
peasant engaged in the labors of the farm or vineyard: cutting the
wheat, gathering in the grapes, and treading out the wine, and, in
the later season, dressing the hog he has been killing; for in those
less sophisticated times, Art, no more than Poetry, despised the ruder
side of rustic life.
The German artists of the sixteenth century introduced peasants and
peasant-life into their designs whenever the subject admitted. Albert
Duerer was especially given to this, and it often gives a particular
savor, sometimes a half-humorous expression, to his treatment of even
religious subjects; as where, in his design, "The Repose in Egypt," he
shows Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, making a water-trough out of
a huge log, and a bevy of cherub-urchins about him gathering up the
chips. Mary, meanwhile, as the peasant mother, sits by, spinning and
rocking the cradle of the Holy Child with her foot.
But these examples only serve to make clearer the fact that in the
earlier times there was no place found in art for the representation
of the laboring man, whether in the field or in the shop, except as an
illustration of some allegorical or religious theme. Nor in the Dutch
pictures that Louis XIV. despised, and that our own time finds so
valuable for their artistic qualities, was there anything outside of
their beauty or richness of tone or color to redeem their coarseness
and vulgarity. There was no poetry in the treatment, nor any sympathy
with anything higher than the grossest guzzling, fighting, and
horseplay. The great monarch, who, according to his lights, was a man
of delicacy and refinement, was certainly right in contemning such
subjects, and it is perhaps to his credit that he did not care enough
for "Art for Art's sake" to excuse the brutality of the theme for the
sake of the beauty of the painting.
The next appearance of the peasant in art was of a very different
sort, and represented a very different state of social feeling from
the "peasants" of the Dutch painters. In the Salon of 1850 there
appeared a picture called "The Sower" and representing a young peasant
sowing grain. There was nothing in the subject to connect it
particularly with any religious symbolism--not even with the Parable
of the Sower who went forth to sow; nor with any series of
personifications of the months. This was a simple peasant of the
Norman coast, in his red blouse and blue trousers, his legs wrapped in
straw, and his weather-beaten hat, full of holes. He marches with the
rhythmic step made necessary by his task, over the downs that top the
high cliffs, followed by a cloud of crows that pounce upon the grain
as he sows it. At first sight there would seem to be nothing in this
picture to call for particular notice; but the public, the artists,
the critics, were with one accord strongly drawn to it. Something in
the picture appealed to feelings deeper than mere curiosity, and an
interest was excited such as did not naturally belong to a picture of
a man sowing a field of grain. The secret was this: that a man born
and bred in the midst of laboring people, struggling with the hard
necessities of life--himself a laborer, and one who knew by experience
all the lights and shades of the laborer's life--had painted this
picture out of his own deep sympathy with his fellows, and to please
himself by reproducing the most significant and poetical act in the
life of the farmer.
The painter of this picture, the first man of our time to give the
laborer in the fields and on the farm a place in art, and to set
people to thinking about him, as a man, not merely as an illustration
of some sacred text, or an image in a book of allegories, was
Jean-Francois Millet, known as the peasant painter of peasants.
He was born at Gruchy, a small hamlet on the coast of Normandy, where
his family, well known in the region for several generations, lived by
the labor of their hands, cultivating their fields and exercising the
simple virtues of that pastoral life, without ambition and without
desire for change. This content was a part of the religion of the
country and must not be looked upon as arguing a low state of
intelligence or of manners. Of their neighbors we have no account, but
the Millet household contained many of the elements that go to sustain
the intellectual no less than the spiritual life. If there was plain
living, there was high thinking; there were books and of the best, and
more than one member of the circle valued learning for its own sake.
Millet owed much to his grandmother, a woman of great strength of
character and of a deeply religious nature. As his godmother she gave
him his name, calling him Jean, after his father, and Francois, after
Saint Francis of Assisi. As is usual in Catholic countries, the boy
was called after the name of his patron saint, and in the case of
Millet, Saint Francis, the ardent lover of nature, the friend of the
birds and of all the animate creation, was well chosen as the guardian
of one who was to prove himself, all his life, the passionate lover of
nature.
The boyhood of Millet was passed at home. He had no schooling except
some small instruction in Latin from the village priest and from a
neighboring curate, but he made good use of what he learned. He worked
on the farm with his father and his men, ploughing, harrowing, sowing,
reaping, mowing, winnowing--in a word, sharing actively and
contentedly in all the work that belongs to the farmer's life. And in
the long winter evenings or in the few hours of rest that the day
afforded, he would hungrily devour the books that were at hand--the
"Lives of the Saints," the "Confessions of Saint Augustine," the "Life
of Saint Jerome," and especially his letters, which he read and
re-read all his life. These and the philosophers of Port Royal, with
Bossuet, and Fenelon, with the Bible and Virgil, were his mental food.
Virgil and the Bible he read always in the Latin; he was so familiar
with them both that, when a man, his biographer, Sensier, says he
never met a more eloquent translator of these two books. When the time
came, therefore, for Millet to go up to Paris, he was not, as has been
said by some writer, an ignorant peasant, but a well-taught man who
had read much and digested what he had read, and knew good books from
bad. The needs of his narrow life absorbed him so seriously that the
seeds of art that lay hid in his nature found a way to the light with
difficulty. But his master-passion was soon to assert itself, and, as
in all such cases, in an unexpected manner.
Millet's attempts at drawing had hitherto been confined to studies
made in hours stolen from rest. He had copied the engravings found in
an old family Bible, and he had drawn, from his window, the garden,
the stable, the field running down to the edge of the high cliff, and
with the sea in the horizon, and he had sometimes tried his hand at
sketching the cows and sheep in the pasture. But he was now to take a
step in advance. Coming home one day from church, he walked behind an
old man bent with age and feebleness, painfully making his way. The
foreshortening and the movement of the man's figure struck the boy
forcibly, and in a flash he discovered the secret of perspective and
the mystery of planes. He ran quickly home, got a pencil and drew from
memory a picture of the old man, so lively in its resemblance that as
soon as his parents saw it, they recognized it and fell a-laughing.
Talk with his boy revealed to the father his son's strong desire to be
an artist; but before such a serious step could be taken, it was
necessary to consult with some person better able to judge than any
one in the Millet household. Cherbourg, the nearest large town, was
the natural place where to seek advice; thither Millet and his father
repaired, the boy with two drawings under his arm that he had made for
the occasion, and these were submitted to the critical eye of Mouchel,
an old pupil of David, who eked out the scanty living he got by
painting by giving lessons in drawing. When the two drawings made by
young Millet were shown him he refused to believe they were the work
of the lad of fifteen. The very subjects chosen by the boy showed
something out of the common. One was a sort of home idyl: two
shepherds were in a little orchard close, one playing on the flute,
the other listening; some sheep were browsing near. The men wore the
blouse and wooden shoes of Millet's country; the orchard was one that
belonged to his father. The other drawing showed a starry night. A man
was coming from the house with loaves of bread in his hand which he
gave to another man who eagerly received them. Underneath, in Latin,
were the words from St. Luke: "Though he will not rise and give him
because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise
and give him as many as he needeth." A friend of Millet's, who saw
these drawings thirty years after, said they were the work of a man
who already knew the great significance of art, the effects it was
capable of, and what were its resources.
Mouchel consented to receive Millet as a pupil, but, as it proved, he
could do little for him in the way of direct teaching. He left the boy
free to follow his own devices. He said to him: "Do whatever you wish;
choose whatever model you find in my studio that pleases you, and
study in the Museum." This might not be the course to follow with
every boy, but Mouchel had the artist's penetration and knew with whom
he had to deal.
The death of Millet's father interrupted his studies and he returned
home for awhile to help his mother on the farm. But it was thought
best that he should keep on with the work he had begun. The
grandmother urged his return: "My Francois," 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 his studies after the same
easy fashion with Langlois as with his former master. Langlois, who
was as much impressed by his pupil's talent as Mouchel had been and
willing to serve him, made a personal appeal to the mayor and council,
asking that Millet, as a promising young artist and one likely to do
credit to the town, might be assisted in going to Paris to study under
better advantages than he could enjoy at home.
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.
Millet was twenty-two years old when he went first to Paris and he
remained there, with occasional visits to Gruchy and Cherbourg, for
the next thirteen years. Paris was, from the first, more than
distasteful to him. He was thoroughly unhappy there. Outside the
Louvre and the studios of a few artist-friends, he found nothing that
appealed to what was deepest in him. His first experiences were
unusually bitter. The struggle with poverty was hard to bear, but
perhaps a more serious drawback was his want of an aim in art, of a
substantial reason, so to speak, for the profession he had chosen,
leading him to one false move after another in search of a subject.
Unformed and unrecognized in his mind lay the desire to express in art
the life he had left behind him in Normandy; but it was long before he
arrived at the knowledge of himself and of his true vocation. He seems
to have had no one in Paris to guide or direct him, and he rather
stumbled into the studio of Delaroche, than entered it deliberately.
He made but a brief stay there, and although he won the respect of his
master, who would willingly have retained him as pupil and assistant,
he was conscious that he learned nothing from Delaroche; and
accordingly, in company with another pupil, Marolles, who had taken a
great liking to him, he left the studio without much ceremony; and the
two friends improvised a studio and a lodging for themselves in a
garret in a poor quarter of the city, and began their search for a
means of pleasing the public. But the way was not opened to either of
them; they could not sell what they painted, and they were reduced to
serious straits. It was not the fault of the public. Marolles was but
an indifferent painter at any time, and Millet would not have blamed
the public for its indifference to subjects in which he himself took
no real interest.
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. He would not appeal to his family,
life was as difficult for them as for him. But before yielding he
would make one more trial, painting something from his own fancy. He
made a small picture representing "Charity"--a sad-faced woman
cherishing three children in her arms. He carried it to the dealers:
not one of them would buy it. He came back to Marolles. "Give me a
subject," he said, "and I will paint it."
To this time belong the pictures for which Millet has been much
criticised by people who did not appreciate his position. Some of them
recall Watteau, others Boucher, but they have a charm, a grace of
their own; they are far from being copies of these men. Others were
fanciful subjects to which Marolles gave names likely to attract the
notice of picture-buyers in search of a subject. But all was in vain.
The dealers were obstinate: the public unsympathetic. The highest
price that was offered was never above twenty francs, or five dollars.
Yet with this in his pocket, Millet deemed himself already on the high
road to fortune, and saw the day not distant when he could paint at
his pleasure the rustic subjects, memories of his home, that had
always been in his mind.
Several times in the course of this hard novitiate, Millet had escaped
from Paris for a visit to his own country. At one time he had remained
for a year at Cherbourg, where he painted portraits for such small
sums as he could get, and here he and one of his sitters, a young girl
of Cherbourg, falling in love with one another, were married. The
marriage only added, as might have been foreseen, to Millet's
troubles: his wife's health was always delicate; after her marriage it
became worse, and she died four years after in Paris. Not long after
her death Millet married again, and this proved a fortunate venture.
His wife came with him to Paris, and the struggle with life began
anew. The turning-point in the long period of Millet's uncertainties
and disappointments with himself came in 1849, when the political
troubles of the time, and the visit of the cholera, combined to drive
him and his family from Paris. They took refuge at Barbizon, a small
hamlet on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and here, in
the place that was to be forever associated with his name and work,
Millet passed, with few interruptions, the remaining years of his
life.
The phrase so often heard to-day, "The Barbizon School," is rather
wider than a strict interpretation would warrant, since Millet and
Rousseau were the only ones of the group who lived in the village.
Corot was not acquainted with Millet. Decamps was never in Millet's
house except as a rare visitor to his studio. Diaz lived in Paris.
Jacque, the painter of sheep, was a friend of Millet, and for a time
at least lived at Barbizon in the house where he lodged before he
procured a home of his own. The artistic relationship between these
artists is slight, except in the case of Rousseau and Diaz, and even
there it is only occasionally to be detected. All these men, with
Dupre, Courbet and Delacroix, were counted heretics in art by the
Academy and the official critics, and as Millet was the most marked
figure in the group and was greatly admired and respected by all who
composed it, it was perhaps natural that they should be considered by
the public as disciples of the peasant painter of Barbizon.
Here, then, at Barbizon, Millet lived for the remaining twenty-seven
years of his life, dividing his day between the labors of his farm in
the morning hours, painting in his studio in the afternoon--he always
preferred the half-light for painting--and in the evening enjoying the
society of his wife and children and of such friends as might join the
circle. Occasional visits to Paris, to the galleries, and to the
studios of his artist-circle, kept him in touch with the world to
which he belonged. His books, too, were his unfailing companions,
though he never cared to stray far beyond the circle of his youthful
friendships, Homer, and Virgil, and especially the Bible, which he
looked upon as the book of painters, the inexhaustible source of the
noblest and most touching subjects, capable of expression in the
grandest forms.
But it was in the rural life about him, the life in which he actively
shared, that he found the world wherein he could pour all his
thoughts, feelings, and experiences with the certainty of seeing them
emerge in forms answering to his conception. It was not until he came
to Barbizon that he began truly to live the artist-life as he
understood it, where the work is a faithful reflection of the only
things a man really cares for--the things he knows by heart. In the
pictures painted at Barbizon, and in the multitude of slight sketches
for subjects never painted, with finished drawings and pastels, Millet
has composed a series of moral eclogues well worthy of a place with
those of Virgil and Theocritus. All the world knows them; all the
world loves them: the "Mother Feeding Her Children," "The Peasant
Grafting," "The First Step," "Going to Work," "The Sower," "The
Gleaners," "The Sheep-Shearing," "The Angelus"--even to name them
would carry us far beyond our limits. They made the fame of Millet
while he still lived, although the pecuniary reward of his labors was
not what they deserved nor what it would have been had he earlier
found his true way or had his life been prolonged to the normal limit.
He died in 1875 at the age of sixty-one. Since his death more than one
of his pictures has been sold at a price exceeding all that he earned
during his whole lifetime. Seen from the world's side, there was much
in his life that was sad and discouraging, but from the spiritual side
there was far more to cheer and uplift. His private life was honorable
and happy, his friends were many and among the chosen ones of the
time, and he had the happiness of seeing his work accepted and rated
at something like its true worth before he left it.
[Signature of the author.]
MEISSONIER[7]
[Footnote 7: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
By CLARENCE COOK
(1813-1891)
[Illustration: Meissonier.]