2636. THE WHISPER.
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 [OE]dipus 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.