Millet was at a loss what to do for bread. His mind ran back continually to his rural life at Gruchy. "What if I should paint men mowing or winnowing?" he said to Marolles; "their movements are picturesque!" "You could not sell them," replied his friend. "Well, then, what do you say to fauns and dryads?" "Who in Paris cares for fauns and dryads?" "What shall I do, then?" said Millet in despair. "What does the public like?" "It likes Boucher's Cupids, Watteau's Pastorals, nudities, anecdotes, and copies of the past." It was hard for Millet, but hunger drove him. He would not appeal to his family, life was as difficult for them as for him. But before yielding he would make one more trial, painting something from his own fancy. He made a small picture representing "Charity"—a sad-faced woman cherishing three children in her arms. He carried it to the dealers: not one of them would buy it. He came back to Marolles. "Give me a subject," he said, "and I will paint it."
To this time belong the pictures for which Millet has been much criticised by people who did not appreciate his position. Some of them recall Watteau, others Boucher, but they have a charm, a grace of their own; they are far from being copies of these men. Others were fanciful subjects to which Marolles gave names likely to attract the notice of picture-buyers in search of a subject. But all was in vain. The dealers were obstinate: the public unsympathetic. The highest price that was offered was never above twenty francs, or five dollars. Yet with this in his pocket, Millet deemed himself already on the high road to fortune, and saw the day not distant when he could paint at his pleasure the rustic subjects, memories of his home, that had always been in his mind.
Several times in the course of this hard novitiate, Millet had escaped from Paris for a visit to his own country. At one time he had remained for a year at Cherbourg, where he painted portraits for such small sums as he could get, and here he and one of his sitters, a young girl of Cherbourg, falling in love with one another, were married. The marriage only added, as might have been foreseen, to Millet's troubles: his wife's health was always delicate; after her marriage it became worse, and she died four years after in Paris. Not long after her death Millet married again, and this proved a fortunate venture. His wife came with him to Paris, and the struggle with life began anew. The turning-point in the long period of Millet's uncertainties and disappointments with himself came in 1849, when the political troubles of the time, and the visit of the cholera, combined to drive him and his family from Paris. They took refuge at Barbizon, a small hamlet on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and here, in the place that was to be forever associated with his name and work, Millet passed, with few interruptions, the remaining years of his life.
The phrase so often heard to-day, "The Barbizon School," is rather wider than a strict interpretation would warrant, since Millet and Rousseau were the only ones of the group who lived in the village. Corot was not acquainted with Millet. Decamps was never in Millet's house except as a rare visitor to his studio. Diaz lived in Paris. Jacque, the painter of sheep, was a friend of Millet, and for a time at least lived at Barbizon in the house where he lodged before he procured a home of his own. The artistic relationship between these artists is slight, except in the case of Rousseau and Diaz, and even there it is only occasionally to be detected. All these men, with Dupré, Courbet and Delacroix, were counted heretics in art by the Academy and the official critics, and as Millet was the most marked figure in the group and was greatly admired and respected by all who composed it, it was perhaps natural that they should be considered by the public as disciples of the peasant painter of Barbizon.
Here, then, at Barbizon, Millet lived for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life, dividing his day between the labors of his farm in the morning hours, painting in his studio in the afternoon—he always preferred the half-light for painting—and in the evening enjoying the society of his wife and children and of such friends as might join the circle. Occasional visits to Paris, to the galleries, and to the studios of his artist-circle, kept him in touch with the world to which he belonged. His books, too, were his unfailing companions, though he never cared to stray far beyond the circle of his youthful friendships, Homer, and Virgil, and especially the Bible, which he looked upon as the book of painters, the inexhaustible source of the noblest and most touching subjects, capable of expression in the grandest forms.
But it was in the rural life about him, the life in which he actively shared, that he found the world wherein he could pour all his thoughts, feelings, and experiences with the certainty of seeing them emerge in forms answering to his conception. It was not until he came to Barbizon that he began truly to live the artist-life as he understood it, where the work is a faithful reflection of the only things a man really cares for—the things he knows by heart. In the pictures painted at Barbizon, and in the multitude of slight sketches for subjects never painted, with finished drawings and pastels, Millet has composed a series of moral eclogues well worthy of a place with those of Virgil and Theocritus. All the world knows them; all the world loves them: the "Mother Feeding Her Children," "The Peasant Grafting," "The First Step," "Going to Work," "The Sower," "The Gleaners," "The Sheep-Shearing," "The Angelus"—even to name them would carry us far beyond our limits. They made the fame of Millet while he still lived, although the pecuniary reward of his labors was not what they deserved nor what it would have been had he earlier found his true way or had his life been prolonged to the normal limit. He died in 1875 at the age of sixty-one. Since his death more than one of his pictures has been sold at a price exceeding all that he earned during his whole lifetime. Seen from the world's side, there was much in his life that was sad and discouraging, but from the spiritual side there was far more to cheer and uplift. His private life was honorable and happy, his friends were many and among the chosen ones of the time, and he had the happiness of seeing his work accepted and rated at something like its true worth before he left it.[Back to Contents]
MEISSONIER[7]
By Clarence Cook
(1813-1891)
