Jean-François Millet (; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French artist and one of the founders of the

Barbizon school The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name ...

in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the

Realism art movement Realism was an artistic movement that emerged in France in the 1840s, around the 1848 Revolution. Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century. Realism revolted against the exotic sub ...

. Toward the end of his career, he became increasingly interested in painting pure landscapes. He is known best for his oil paintings but is also noted for his pastels, conte crayon drawings, and etchings.

Life and work

Youth

Millet was the first child of Jean-Louis-Nicolas and Aimée-Henriette-Adélaïde Henry Millet, members of the farming community in the village of Gruchy, in

Gréville-Hague Gréville-Hague () is a former commune in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France. On 1 January 2017, it was merged into the new commune La Hague.Murphy, p.xix. Under the guidance of two village priests—one of them was vicar Jean Lebrisseux—Millet acquired a knowledge of Latin and modern authors. But soon he had to help his father with the farm work; because Millet was the eldest of the sons. So all the farmer's work was familiar to him: to mow, make hay, bind the sheaves, thresh, winnow, spread manure, plow, sow, etc. All these motifs returned in his later art. In 1833, his father sent him to

Cherbourg Cherbourg (; , , ), nrf, Chèrbourg, ) is a former commune and subprefecture located at the northern end of the Cotentin peninsula in the northwestern French department of Manche. It was merged into the commune of Cherbourg-Octeville on 28 Febr ...

to study with a portrait painter named Bon Du Mouchel. By 1835 he was studying with Théophile Langlois de Chèvreville,McPherson, H. (2003). Millet, Jean-François. ''Grove Art Online''. a pupil of Baron Gros, in

. A stipend provided by Langlois and others enabled Millet to move to Paris in 1837, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts with Paul Delaroche.Honour, H. and J. Fleming, p. 669. In 1839, his scholarship was terminated, and his first submission to the Salon, ''Saint Anne Instructing the Virgin'', was rejected by the jury.Pollock, p. 21.

Paris

After his first painting, a portrait, was accepted at the Salon of 1840, Millet returned to Cherbourg to begin a career as a portrait painter. The following year he married Pauline-Virginie Ono, and they moved to Paris. After rejections at the Salon of 1843 and Pauline's death by

consumption Consumption may refer to: *Resource consumption *Tuberculosis, an infectious disease, historically * Consumption (ecology), receipt of energy by consuming other organisms * Consumption (economics), the purchasing of newly produced goods for curren ...

in April 1844, Millet returned again to Cherbourg. In 1845, Millet moved to

Le Havre Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very ...

with Catherine Lemaire, whom he married in a civil ceremony in 1853; they had nine children and remained together for the rest of Millet's life. In Le Havre he painted portraits and small genre pieces for several months, before moving back to Paris. It was in Paris in the middle 1840s that Millet befriended

Constant Troyon Constant Troyon (August 28, 1810 – February 21, 1865) was a French painter of the Barbizon school. In the early part of his career he painted mostly landscapes. It was only comparatively late in life that Troyon found his ''métier'' as a p ...

Narcisse Diaz Narcisse can be both a given name and surname. Notable people with the name include: Given name * Narcisse Bambara (born 1989), Burkinabé footballer * Narcisse Blais (1812–1888), Canadian farmer and political figure in Quebec * Narcisse Bona ...

Charles Jacque Charles-Émile Jacque (23 May 1813 – 7 May 1894) was a French painter of Pastoralism and engraver who was, with Jean-François Millet, part of the Barbizon School. He first learned to engrave maps when he spent seven years in the French Army. ...

, and

Théodore Rousseau Étienne Pierre Théodore Rousseau (April 15, 1812December 22, 1867) was a French painter of the Barbizon school. Life Youth He was born in Paris, France in a bourgeois family. At first he received a basic level of training, but soon displaye ...

, artists who, like Millet, became associated with the Barbizon school;

Honoré Daumier Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808February 10, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second Na ...

, whose figure draftsmanship influenced Millet's subsequent rendering of peasant subjects; and :fr:Alfred Sensier, a government bureaucrat who became a lifelong supporter and eventually the artist's biographer. In 1847, his first Salon success came with the exhibition of a painting ''Oedipus Taken down from the Tree'', and in 1848, his ''Winnower'' was bought by the government.Pollock, p. 22. ''The Captivity of the Jews in Babylon'', Millet's most ambitious work at the time, was unveiled at the Salon of 1848, but was scorned by art critics and the public alike. The painting eventually disappeared shortly thereafter, leading historians to believe that Millet destroyed it. In 1984, scientists at the

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

x-rayed Millet's 1870 painting ''The Young Shepherdess'' looking for minor changes, and discovered that it was painted over ''Captivity''. It is now believed that Millet reused the canvas when materials were in short supply during the Franco-Prussian War.

Barbizon

In 1849, Millet painted ''Harvesters'', a commission for the state. In the Salon of that year, he exhibited ''Shepherdess Sitting at the Edge of the Forest'', a very small oil painting which marked a turning away from previous idealized pastoral subjects, in favor of a more realistic and personal approach. In June of that year, he settled in

Barbizon Barbizon () is a commune (town) in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France. It is located near the Fontainebleau Forest. Demographics The inhabitants are called ''Barbizonais''. Art history The Barbizon school of painters is n ...

with Catherine and their children. HarvestersRestingRuthBoazMillet

In 1850, Millet entered into an arrangement with Sensier, who provided the artist with materials and money in return for drawings and paintings, while Millet simultaneously was free to continue selling work to other buyers as well. At that year's Salon, he exhibited ''Haymakers'' and ''The Sower'', his first major masterpiece and the earliest of the iconic trio of paintings that included ''The Gleaners'' and ''The Angelus''. From 1850 to 1853, Millet worked on ''Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz)'', a painting he considered his most important, and on which he worked the longest. Conceived to rival his heroes Michelangelo and

Poussin Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for ...

, it was also the painting that marked his transition from the depiction of symbolic imagery of peasant life to that of contemporary social conditions. It was the only painting he ever dated, and was the first work to garner him official recognition, a second-class medal at the 1853 salon. In the mid-1850s, Millet produced a small number of etchings of peasant subjects, such as ''Man with a Wheelbarrow'' (1855) and ''Woman Carding Wool'' (1855–1857).

''The Gleaners''

This is one of the most well known of Millet's paintings, ''

The Gleaners ''The Gleaners'' (''Des glaneuses'') is an oil painting by Jean-François Millet completed in 1857. It depicts three peasant women gleaning a field of stray stalks of wheat after the harvest. The painting is famous for featuring in a sympatheti ...

'' (1857). While Millet was walking the fields around Barbizon, one theme returned to his pencil and brush for seven years— gleaning—the centuries-old right of poor women and children to remove the bits of grain left in the fields following the harvest. He found the theme an eternal one, linked to stories from the Old Testament. In 1857, he submitted the painting ''The Gleaners'' to the Salon to an unenthusiastic, even hostile, public. (Earlier versions include a vertical composition painted in 1854, an etching of 1855–56 which directly presaged the horizontal format of the painting now in the Musée d'Orsay.) A warm golden light suggests something sacred and eternal in this daily scene where the struggle to survive takes place. During his years of preparatory studies, Millet contemplated how best to convey the sense of repetition and fatigue in the peasants' daily lives. Lines traced over each woman's back lead to the ground and then back up in a repetitive motion identical to their unending, backbreaking labor. Along the horizon, the setting sun silhouettes the farm with its abundant stacks of grain, in contrast to the large shadowy figures in the foreground. The dark homespun dresses of the gleaners cut robust forms against the golden field, giving each woman a noble, monumental strength.

''The Angelus''

The painting was commissioned by Thomas Gold Appleton, an American

art collector A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...

based in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most p ...

, Massachusetts. Appleton previously studied with Millet's friend, the Barbizon painter

. It was completed during the summer of 1857. Millet added a steeple and changed the initial title of the work, ''Prayer for the Potato Crop'' to ''The Angelus'' when the purchaser failed to take possession of it in 1859. Displayed to the public for the first time in 1865, the painting changed hands several times, increasing only modestly in value, since some considered the artist's political sympathies suspect. Upon Millet's death a decade later, a bidding war between the US and France ensued, ending some years later with a price tag of 800,000 gold francs. The disparity between the apparent value of the painting and the poor estate of Millet's surviving family was a major impetus in the invention of the droit de suite, intended to compensate artists or their heirs when works are resold.

Later years

Millet, Jean-François II - Hunting Birds at Night

Despite mixed reviews of the paintings, he exhibited at the Salon, Millet's reputation and success grew throughout the 1860s. At the beginning of the decade, he contracted to paint 25 works in return for a monthly stipend for the next three years and in 1865, another patron, Emile Gavet, began commissioning pastels for a collection that eventually included 90 works.Murphy, p. xx. In 1867, the Exposition Universelle hosted a major showing of his work, with the ''Gleaners'', ''Angelus'', and ''Potato Planters'' among the paintings exhibited. The following year, Frédéric Hartmann commissioned ''Four Seasons'' for 25,000 francs, and Millet was named

Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon B ...

. In 1870, Millet was elected to the Salon jury. Later that year, he and his family fled the Franco-Prussian War, moving to Cherbourg and Gréville, and did not return to Barbizon until late in 1871. His last years were marked by financial success and increased official recognition, but he was unable to fulfill government commissions due to failing health. On 3 January 1875, he married Catherine in a religious ceremony. Millet died on 20 January 1875.

Legacy

Millet was an important source of inspiration for

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...

, particularly during his early period. Millet and his work are mentioned many times in Vincent's letters to his brother Theo. Millet's late landscapes served as influential points of reference to

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

's paintings of the coast of Normandy; his structural and symbolic content influenced

Georges Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough sur ...

as well. Millet is the main protagonist of Mark Twain's play ''

Is He Dead? ''Is He Dead?'' is a play by Mark Twain based on his earlier 1893 short story. The play, written by Twain in 1898, was first published in print in 2003 after Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin read the manuscript in the archives of the Mark ...

'' (1898), in which he is depicted as a struggling young artist who fakes his death to score fame and fortune. Most of the details about Millet in the play are fictional. Millet's painting ''L'homme à la houe'' inspired the famous poem " The Man With the Hoe" (1898) by

Edwin Markham Edwin Markham (born Charles Edward Anson Markham; April 23, 1852 – March 7, 1940) was an American poet. From 1923 to 1931 he was Poet Laureate of Oregon. Life Edwin Markham was born in Oregon City, Oregon, and was the youngest of 10 children ...

. His paintings also served as the inspiration for American poet David Middleton's collection ''The Habitual Peacefulness of Gruchy: Poems After Pictures by Jean-François Millet'' (2005). The ''Angelus'' was reproduced frequently in the 19th and 20th centuries. Salvador Dalí was fascinated by this work, and wrote an analysis of it, ''The Tragic Myth of The Angelus of Millet''. Rather than seeing it as a work of spiritual peace, Dalí believed it held messages of repressed sexual aggression. Dalí was also of the opinion that the two figures were praying over their buried child, rather than to the

Angelus The Angelus (; Latin for "angel") is a Catholic devotion commemorating the Incarnation of Christ. As with many Catholic prayers, the name ''Angelus'' is derived from its incipit—the first few words of the text: ("The Angel of the Lord ...

. Dalí was so insistent on this fact that eventually an X-ray was done of the canvas, confirming his suspicions: the painting contains a painted-over geometric shape strikingly similar to a coffin.Néret, 2000 However, it is unclear whether Millet changed his mind on the meaning of the painting, or even if the shape actually is a coffin.

Gallery

File:1841, Millet, Jean-François, Portrait of Louis-Alexandre Marolles.jpg, ''Portrait of Louis-Alexandre Marolles'', 1841, Princeton University Art Museum File:The Abduction of the Sabine Women by Jean-François Millet.png, ''The Abduction of the Sabine Women'' by Jean-François Millet, c.1844–1847 File:Going to Work by Jean-François Millet, 1851-53.jpg, ''Going to Work'', 1851–1853 File:Mille - Shepherdess Seated on a Rock - Metropolitan.jpg, '' Shepherdess Seated on a Rock'', 1856 File:Jean-François Millet - Apport à la maison le veau né dans les champs (1860).jpg, ''Bringing home the calf born in the fields'', c. 1860, Princeton University Art Museum File:Jean-François Millet - Shepherd Tending His Flock - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Shepherd Tending His Flock'', early 1860s File:Jean-François Millet - Potato Planters - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Potato Planters'', 1861 File:Jean-François Millet - The Goose Girl - Walters 37153.jpg, ''The Goose Girl'', 1863 File:Jean-François Millet Pastora.jpg, '' Shepherdess with her Flock'', 1864 File:Haystacks Autumn 1873 Jean-Francois Millet.jpg, '' Haystacks:Autumn'', c. 1874, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art File:Millet Gréville.JPG, '' The Coast of Gréville'', undated National Museum, Stockholm

Notes

References

* Champa, Kermit S. ''The Rise of Landscape Painting in France: Corot to Monet''. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991. * Honour, H. and Fleming, J. ''A World History of Art''. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2009. * Lepoittevin, Lucien. ''Catalogue raisonné Jean-François Millet'' en 2 volumes – Paris 1971 / 1973 * Lepoittevin, Lucien. "Le Viquet – Retour sur les premiers pas : un Millet inconnu" – N° 139 Paques 2003. * Lepoittevin, Lucien. ''Jean François Millet (Au delà de l'Angélus)'' – Ed de Monza – 2002 – () * Lepoittevin, Lucien. ''Jean François Millet : Images et symboles'', Éditions Isoète Cherbourg 1990. () * Moreau-Nélaton, E. ''Monographie de reference, Millet raconté par lui-même'' – 3 volumes – Paris 1921 * Murphy, Alexandra R. ''Jean-François Millet''. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984. * Plaideux, Hugues. "L'inventaire après décès et la déclaration de succession de Jean-François Millet", in ''Revue de la Manche'', t. 53, fasc. 212, 2e trim. 2011, p. 2–38. * Plaideux, Hugues. "Une enseigne de vétérinaire cherbourgeois peinte par Jean-François Millet en 1841", in ''Bulletin de la Société française d'histoire de la médecine et des sciences vétérinaires'', n° 11, 2011, p. 61–75. * Pollock, Griselda. ''Millet''. London: Oresko, 1977. . * Stokes, Simon. ''Art and Copyright''. Hart Publishing, 2001. * Tadie, Andrew
Poetry and Peace: The Habitual Peacefulness of Gruchy: Poems After Pictures by Jean-François Millet by David Middleton
''Modern Age: A Quarterly Review''. Summer/Fall 2009 (Vol. 51:3)

External links

jeanmillet.org
125 works by Jean-François Millet

Influence on Van Gogh

Influence on Dali
– grieving parents or praying peasants in ''The Angelus''? * * * "

Jean-François Millet Jean-François Millet (; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French artist and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realis ...

", poem by

Florence Earle Coates Florence Van Leer Earle Nicholson Coates (July 1, 1850 – April 6, 1927) was an American poet, whose prolific output was published in many literary magazines, some of it set to music. She was mentored by the English poet Matthew Arnold, with wh ...

* Cartwright, Julia, (1902
''Jean François Millet: his life and letters''
London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co. * Sensier, Alfred, (1881
''Jean-Francois Millet – Peasant and Painter''
(transl. Helena de Kay) London: Macmillan and Co. {{DEFAULTSORT:Millet, Jean-Francois 1814 births 1875 deaths People from Manche French Realist painters 19th-century French painters French male painters 19th-century French male artists