Corot, eighteen years the senior of Millet, was the first to welcome the whipped-out artist to Barbizon. With him Corot divided his scanty store; he sang and played his guitar at the Millet hearthstone when he had nothing but himself to give; and when, in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, Millet felt the chill night of death settling down upon him, and the fear that want would come to his loved ones haunted his dreams, Corot assured him by settling upon the family the sum of one thousand francs a year, until the youngest child should become of age, and during Madame Millet's life.
So died Jean Francois Millet.
In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine "The Angelus" was bought by an
American Syndicate for five hundred eighty thousand francs. In
Eighteen Hundred Ninety it was bought back by agents of the French
Government for seven hundred fifty thousand francs, and now has
found a final resting-place in the Louvre.
Within a few months after the death of Millet, Corot, too, passed away.
Corot is a remarkable example of a soul ripening slowly. His skill was not at its highest until he was seventy-one years of age. He then had eight years of life and work left, and he continued even to the end. In his art there was no decline.
It can not be said that he received due recognition until he was approaching his seventy-fifth year, for it was then, for the first time, that the world of buyers besieged his door. The few who had bought before were usually friends who had purchased with the amiable idea of helping a worthy man.
During the last few years of Corot's life, his income was over fifty thousand francs a year—"more than I received for pictures during my whole career," he once said. And then he shed tears at parting with the treasures that had been for so long his close companions.
"You see, I am a collector," he used to say, "but being poor, I have to paint all my pictures myself—they are not for sale."
And probably he would have kept his collection unbroken were it not that he wanted the money so much to give away.
Of the painters classed in the Barbizon School, it is probable that Corot will live longest, and will continue to occupy the highest position. His art is more individual than Rousseau's, more poetic than that of Daubigny, and in every sense more beautiful than that of Millet. When Camille Corot passed out, on the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, he was the best-loved man in Paris. Five thousand art-students wore crape on their arms for a year in memory of "Papa Corot," a man who did his work joyously, lived long, and to the end carried in his heart the perfume of the morning, and the beneficent beauty of the sunrise.