Jean-François Millet (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ fʁɑ̃swa milɛ]; October 4, 1814 – January 20, 1875) was a French artist and a co-founder of the Barbizon school, situated in rural France. Millet is renowned for his portrayals of peasant farmers, positioning his oeuvre within the Realism art movement. Towards the conclusion of his artistic career, he increasingly focused on rendering pure landscapes. Although primarily celebrated for his oil paintings, his body of work also includes significant pastels, Conté crayon drawings, and etchings.
Jean-François Millet (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃fʁɑ̃swamilɛ]; 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 Realism art movement. 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, Conté crayon drawings, and etchings.
Biography and Artistic Contributions
Early Life
Jean-François Millet was the eldest offspring of Jean-Louis-Nicolas and Aimée-Henriette-Adélaïde Henry Millet, who belonged to the agricultural community of Gruchy, a village located in Gréville-Hague, Normandy, near the coastline. He received instruction in Latin and contemporary literature from two local priests, one of whom was Vicar Jean Lebrisseux. However, as the eldest son, Millet was soon required to assist his father with farm labor. Consequently, he became proficient in various agricultural tasks, including mowing, haymaking, sheaf-binding, threshing, winnowing, manure spreading, plowing, and sowing. These experiences profoundly influenced his later artistic themes.
In 1833, Millet's father dispatched him to Cherbourg to apprentice under Bon Du Mouchel, a portrait painter. By 1835, he was studying in Cherbourg with Théophile Langlois de Chèvreville, a former student of Baron Gros. A scholarship, funded by Langlois and other benefactors, facilitated Millet's relocation to Paris in 1837, where he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts under the tutelage of Paul Delaroche. His scholarship concluded in 1839, and his initial submission to the Salon, Saint Anne Instructing the Virgin, was subsequently rejected by the judging panel.
Parisian Period
Following the acceptance of his first painting, a portrait, at the 1840 Salon, Millet returned to Cherbourg to establish himself as a portrait artist. The subsequent year, he married Pauline-Virginie Ono, and the couple relocated to Paris. However, after facing rejections at the 1843 Salon and the death of Pauline from consumption in April 1844, Millet once again returned to Cherbourg. In 1845, he moved to Le Havre with Catherine Lemaire, whom he formally married in a civil ceremony in 1853. They had nine children and remained together throughout Millet's life. During his stay in Le Havre, he produced portraits and minor genre works for several months before returning to Paris.
During the mid-1840s in Paris, Millet cultivated friendships with Constant Troyon, Narcisse Diaz, Charles Jacque, and Théodore Rousseau, all of whom, like Millet, became affiliated with the Barbizon school. He also befriended Honoré Daumier, whose mastery of figure drawing significantly influenced Millet's later depictions of peasant themes, and Alfred Sensier, a government official who became a steadfast patron and ultimately the artist's biographer. Millet achieved his initial Salon success in 1847 with the exhibition of Oedipus Taken down from the Tree, and in 1848, his work Winnower was acquired by the government.
Millet's then-most ambitious creation, The Captivity of the Jews in Babylon, debuted at the 1848 Salon but garnered widespread condemnation from both art critics and the public. The painting subsequently vanished, leading historians to hypothesize its destruction by Millet. However, in 1984, scientists at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston conducted an X-ray examination of Millet's 1870 painting, The Young Shepherdess, while investigating minor alterations. This analysis revealed that The Young Shepherdess had been painted over Captivity. Current scholarly consensus suggests that Millet repurposed the canvas due to material scarcity during the Franco-Prussian War.
The Barbizon Period
In 1849, Millet completed Harvesters, a state-commissioned work. At the Salon of the same year, he presented Shepherdess Sitting at the Edge of the Forest, a diminutive oil painting that signified a departure from earlier idealized pastoral themes towards a more realistic and individualized artistic perspective. By June of that year, he had established residence in Barbizon with Catherine and their children.
By 1850, Millet had formalized an agreement with Sensier, wherein Sensier supplied the artist with materials and financial support in exchange for drawings and paintings. Concurrently, Millet retained the autonomy to sell his works to other patrons. At the Salon held that year, he exhibited Haymakers and The Sower, which is considered his inaugural major masterpiece and the initial piece in an iconic triptych that also comprises The Gleaners and The Angelus.
From 1850 to 1853, Millet dedicated himself to Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz), a work he regarded as his most significant and on which he spent the longest period. Intended to compete with the masterpieces of Michelangelo and Poussin, this painting also signified his artistic shift from symbolic representations of rural existence to portrayals of current social realities. It stands as his sole dated painting and was the inaugural work to earn him official acclaim, specifically a second-class medal at the 1853 Salon.
During the mid-1850s, Millet created a limited series of etchings depicting peasant themes, including Man with a Wheelbarrow (1855) and Woman Carding Wool (1855–1857).
The Gleaners
Among Millet's most renowned artworks is The Gleaners (1857). For seven years, while traversing the fields surrounding Barbizon, Millet repeatedly explored the subject of gleaning—the ancient custom permitting impoverished women and children to collect residual grain after the harvest. He perceived this theme as timeless, connecting it to narratives from the Old Testament. Upon its submission to the Salon in 1857, the painting The Gleaners was met with an indifferent, even antagonistic, public reception.
Prior iterations of the work encompass a vertical composition executed in 1854 and an etching from 1855–56, which directly foreshadowed the horizontal arrangement of the painting currently housed in the Musée d'Orsay.
Throughout his preliminary studies, Millet meticulously considered how to best articulate the pervasive sense of repetition and exhaustion inherent in the daily existence of peasants. The contours delineating each woman's back descend towards the earth and then ascend again, mirroring the ceaseless, arduous nature of their toil. On the horizon, the setting sun casts the farm, with its plentiful grain stacks, into silhouette, providing a stark contrast to the prominent, shadowed figures in the foreground. The gleaners' dark, homespun attire creates powerful silhouettes against the golden field, imbuing each woman with an impression of resilience.
The Angelus
This painting was commissioned by Thomas Gold Appleton, an American art collector residing in Boston, Massachusetts, who had previously studied under Constant Troyon, a Barbizon painter and friend of Millet. Completed in the summer of 1857, the artwork initially bore the title Prayer for the Potato Crop. Millet subsequently added a steeple and retitled it The Angelus after the commissioner failed to acquire it in 1859. First exhibited publicly in 1865, the painting underwent multiple ownership changes, yet its value appreciated only marginally, partly due to suspicions regarding the artist's political leanings. A decade after Millet's demise, a competitive bidding process between the United States and France erupted, culminating several years later in a sale price of 800,000 gold francs.
The significant discrepancy between the painting's market value and the impoverished circumstances of Millet's surviving family served as a primary catalyst for the establishment of the droit de suite, a legal right designed to provide compensation to artists or their descendants upon the resale of their works.
Later Years
Notwithstanding the varied critical reception of his Salon exhibits, Millet's renown and professional achievements expanded considerably throughout the 1860s. Early in the decade, he secured a contract to produce 25 paintings over three years in exchange for a monthly stipend. By 1865, another patron, Emile Gavet, initiated commissions for pastels, ultimately amassing a collection of 90 works. The Exposition Universelle of 1867 featured a significant display of his art, including Gleaners, Angelus, and Potato Planters. The subsequent year, Frédéric Hartmann commissioned Four Seasons for 25,000 francs, and Millet was conferred the title of Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.
In 1870, Millet attained election to the Salon jury. Later that year, he and his family sought refuge from the Franco-Prussian War, relocating to Cherbourg and Gréville, and did not return to Barbizon until late 1871. His final years were characterized by financial prosperity and heightened official acknowledgment; however, deteriorating health prevented him from completing governmental commissions. On January 3, 1875, he formally married Catherine in a religious ceremony. Millet passed away on January 20, 1875.
Legacy
Millet significantly inspired Vincent van Gogh, especially in his formative years, with numerous references to Millet and his art appearing in Vincent's correspondence with his brother Theo. Furthermore, Millet's later landscape works provided a crucial reference for Claude Monet's depictions of the Normandy coast, while his structural and symbolic elements also influenced Georges Seurat.
Mark Twain's 1898 play, Is He Dead?, features Millet as its central character, portraying him as a struggling young artist who stages his own death to achieve renown and wealth. The biographical details concerning Millet within the play are largely fictitious.
The renowned poem "The Man With the Hoe" (1898) by Edwin Markham drew inspiration from Millet's painting L'homme à la houe. Additionally, Millet's artworks provided the creative impetus for American poet David Middleton's 2005 collection, The Habitual Peacefulness of Gruchy: Poems After Pictures by Jean-François Millet.
The artwork Angelus saw widespread reproduction throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Salvador Dalí, captivated by this piece, authored an analysis titled The Tragic Myth of The Angelus of Millet. Dalí interpreted the painting not as an expression of spiritual tranquility, but rather as conveying themes of repressed sexual aggression. He further posited that the two figures were mourning a buried child, rather than engaging in prayer to the Angelus. Dalí's conviction was so strong that an X-ray examination of the canvas was eventually conducted, which corroborated his hypothesis by revealing a painted-over geometric form strikingly resembling a coffin. Nevertheless, it remains uncertain whether Millet altered his original intent for the painting, or if the discovered shape definitively represents a coffin.
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Millet's passing, the National Gallery, London, presented the exhibition Millet: Life on the Land. This exhibition, curated by Sarah Herring, featured works loaned from various institutions across the United Kingdom.
Notes
Champa, Kermit S. The Rise of Landscape Painting in France: Corot to Monet. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991. ISBN 0-8109-3757-3.
- Champa, Kermit S. The Rise of Landscape Painting in France: Corot to Monet. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991. ISBN 0-8109-3757-3
- Honour, H., and Fleming, J. A World History of Art. 7th ed. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2009. ISBN 9781856695848.
- Lepoittevin, Lucien. Catalogue raisonné Jean-François Millet in 2 volumes – Paris 1971 / 1973.
- Lepoittevin, Lucien. "Le Viquet – Retour sur les premiers pas : un Millet inconnu" – No. 139, Easter 2003. ISSN 0764-7948.
- Lepoittevin, Lucien. Jean François Millet (Beyond The Angelus) – Ed de Monza – 2002 – (ISBN 2-908071-93-2).
- Lepoittevin, Lucien. Jean François Millet: Images and Symbols, Éditions Isoète Cherbourg 1990. (ISBN 2-905385-32-4).
- Moreau-Nélaton, E. Reference Monograph, Millet as Told by Himself – 3 volumes – Paris 1921.
- Murphy, Alexandra R. Jean-François Millet. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984. ISBN 0-87846-237-6.
- Plaideux, Hugues. "The Post-Mortem Inventory and the Declaration of Succession of Jean-François Millet," in Revue de la Manche, vol. 53, issue 212, 2nd quarter 2011, pp. 2–38.
- Plaideux, Hugues. "A Cherbourg Veterinarian's Sign Painted by Jean-François Millet in 1841," in Bulletin de la Société française d'histoire de la médecine et des sciences vétérinaires, no. 11, 2011, pp. 61–75.
- Pollock, Griselda. Millet. London: Oresko, 1977. ISBN 0905368134.
- Stokes, Simon. Art and Copyright. Hart Publishing, 2001. ISBN 1-84113-225-X.
- Tadie, Andrew. "Poetry and Peace: The Habitual Peacefulness of Gruchy: Poems After Pictures by Jean-François Millet." Modern Age: A Quarterly Review. Summer/Fall 2009 (Vol. 51:3).
- jeanmillet.org; 125 works by Jean-François Millet
- Maura Coughlin's article on Millet's Norman milkmaids
- Influence on Dali – grieving parents or praying peasants in The Angelus?
- Gillet, Louis (1913). "Jean-François Millet" . Catholic Encyclopedia.Dilke, Emilia Francis Strong (1911). "Millet, Jean François (1814–1875)" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). pp. 466–467.
- Cartwright, Julia. (1902). Jean François Millet: His Life and Letters. London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co.
- Sensier, Alfred. (1881). Jean-Francois Millet – Peasant and Painter (Translated by Helena de Kay). London: Macmillan and Co.
- Exhibition catalogue. The Drawings of Jean-François Millet. Jill Newhouse Gallery, 21 January – 4 March 2022.