DAUMIER
What Millet did for the life of the country, Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) did for the life of the town, of which he was a shrewd and critical observer. But his long practice as a caricaturist made him look upon the types that engaged his brush with a certain cruel bitterness which is far removed from Millet’s human sympathy. With a palette restricted almost to black and grey, Daumier yet proved himself a great colourist through the infallible accuracy of his tone-values and the suggestion of rich colour in his almost monochrome schemes. His design is as massive and monumental as Millet’s. The touch of the macabre, which is so characteristic of Daumier’s art, is very evident in The Thieves and the Donkey (No. 2937). The Portrait of the Painter Théodore Rousseau (No. 2938) holds a hint of the caricaturist’s vision.
COURBET
Equally far removed from, and hostile to, Classicism and Romanticism was Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), who as head and founder of the Realistic school exercised a prodigious influence upon nineteenth-century art. He was essentially a fighting spirit, determined to overcome official hostility to his revolutionary principles. Excluded from public exhibitions, he held a private show of his own works, and defended his theories by spoken and written arguments. His just claim was that it did not matter what you paint, but how you paint what you actually see; and in conformity with his loudly proclaimed principles he often chose subjects that were offensive to the taste of his day. At the same time we can see now that he was endowed with a keen instinctive feeling for pictorial fitness, and that most of his pictures are far from being haphazard snapshots of actuality. In his student years he had copied many masterpieces by Rembrandt, Velazquez, Hals, and Van Dyck. How much he benefited from the example of the old masters is to be judged from his portrait of himself, known as The Man with the Leather-belt (No. 147).
PLATE LII.—JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
(1814–1875)
No. 644.—WOMEN GLEANING
(Les Glaneuses)
In a harvest-field three female gleaners, seen in profile to the left, are occupied with picking up blades of corn. Two of them are bending right down, with their right hands touching the ground; the third woman is half erect. In the background some ricks, a cart and horses, harvesters, a farm building, and a horseman.
Signed on right:—“j. f. millet.”
Painted in oil on canvas.
2 ft. 8¾ in. × 3 ft. 8¼ in. (0·82 × 1·12.)