m 
 
JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET 
 
 PEASANT AND PAINTER 
 
 Translated by Helena de Kay from the French 
 ALFRED SENSIER 
 
 iLonirnn 
 
 MACMILLAN AND 
 1881 
 
 CO. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/jeanfrancoismillOOsens 
 
ALFRED SENSIER. 
 
 ALFRED SENSIER, whose posthumous book is here pubHshed, 
 was a man who interested himself in historical things, who 
 loved, almost with passion, pictures, drawings, and engravings, and 
 who defended with the mo3t indefatigable devotion some of the 
 greatest artists of this century. He fought for them and by their 
 side. In future years the name of Sensier will be always associated 
 with the names of Theodore Rousseau, Diaz, and Millet. 
 
 Born in Paris on the 25th of December, 18 15, the son of a 
 lawyer who delighted in books, Alfred Sensier heard, from child- 
 hood, the gossip of "Vignette editions" as well as the severer 
 discussions of the law. Although he spent some of his youthful 
 3^ears in a lawyer's office, Sensier was always fond of pictures. 
 While pursuing his law course, he watched with a passionate 
 attention the great battles of modern art and its triumphs. 
 
 When we first knew Alfred Sensier, a little while after the proc- 
 lamation of the second Republic, he had just entered the Louvre 
 with Jeanron. From the ist of April, 1848, to the end of 1850, he 
 fulfilled the functions of Chef dc Bureau, des Musees. It was espe- 
 cially at this time that he was curious about collecting authentic 
 documents on the subject of the Revolution and its leaders. He had 
 carefully studied the history of that time, and it was interesting to 
 
vi 
 
 ALFRED SENSIER. 
 
 hear him talk of the great politicians of the Constituent Assembly 
 and of the National Convention. All who are interested in this 
 period know the value of his collection, his ingenious discoveries, 
 and the memories bequeathed to him by his family. 
 
 Leaving the administration of the museums, he went into the 
 office of the Minister of the Interior, remaining there until June 1st, 
 1873, at which time he was retired. His health, which had for some 
 time been failing, did not permit him to make entire use of the 
 liberty he had regained. Many of his projects remained nothing 
 but dreams. Alfred Sensier died on the 7th of January, 1877, 
 his modest apartment in the Rue Chaptal, of which he had made 
 a little museum. 
 
 In his youth he found himself one of a group of artists at war 
 with the authorities, and he formed strong friendships with those 
 especially who were destined to introduce into modern landscape the 
 poetry of a new ideal. Sensier, who had never liked academies, was 
 from the outset a member of the free academy of Barbizon. He 
 became intimate with Theodore Rousseau in 1846 — that is, at the 
 time when the eminent landscape-painter was an outlaw, a heretic, 
 whose suspicious works would, in the eyes of the jury, dishonor the 
 Salon of the Louvre. Sensier became, from that moment, a sharer 
 in all the fortunes of war which the brave artist had to endure, and 
 afterward his testamentary executor and historian. 
 
 Sensier knew and loved the glorious phalanx of painters who are 
 still the honor of modern landscape. He knew Jules Dupre, Barye, 
 Troyon, and Diaz. He was a most constant friend to Jean-F rangois 
 Millet, that strong and delicate master whom victory was so slow to 
 crown. These artists were all victims of the official jury. Sensier 
 suffered from the insult to his friends. Age did not calm his warlike 
 propensities. We may say to-day that Sensier was more of a fighter 
 than a critic. 
 
ALFRED SENSIER. 
 
 vii 
 
 Nevertheless he doubted of his capacity, and hesitated a long 
 time before becoming a man of letters. In 1858 he published, under 
 a pseudonym, an interesting notice of Olivier de Serres — a little 
 work which book-lovers should preserve, not only on account of the 
 documents which it contains, but also because it has as frontispiece 
 one of the rare lithographs by Millet. 
 
 Sensier then made an excursion into the eighteenth century. He 
 translated and annotated the journal of Rosalba Carriera (1865). He 
 wrote in the Epoque," under the pseudonym of Jean Ravenel, 
 several articles on the Exhibitions and on modern painting, and 
 as he was always a warrior carrrying a flag, he constantly, in his 
 criticisms, said a good word for the group of sympathetic painters of 
 the school of Barbizon, of whom he was glad to be the mouth-piece. 
 Finally, he worked with great energy on the " Rcviic interiiationale de 
 r art et de la curiositc,'' which he had founded in 1869, in company 
 with Ernest Feydeau, — a periodical whose publication was brought 
 to an end by the events of 1870. 
 
 It was in this review that Sensier printed his most important 
 work, the " Souvenirs siir Theodore Rousseau.'' These articles, full 
 of personal revelations of the artist and the man, were gathered into 
 a volume in 1872, and form the most detailed biography of the great 
 landscape-painter. The following year he published his Etude sur 
 George MicheT' — a difficult work, for he who has been called the 
 "Ruysdael of Montmartre" had already become an almost legendary 
 personage ; and it was not without great pains that the historian 
 managed to clear up the obscure points of his mysterious life. 
 
 After having finished this task, Sensier, already ill and old before 
 his time, wished to produce a companion to his Souvenirs of Rous- 
 seau," and undertook a book which he alone was competent to write 
 — a biography of Jean-Frangois Millet. He had the letters of his 
 comrade at hand, he was acquainted with interesting particulars as 
 
Vlll 
 
 ALFRED SENSIER. 
 
 to his origin, his work, and his struggles, which were unknown to the 
 pubHc. The writer died without being able to finish his work. 
 
 The day of Sensier's funeral, it was decided among his family and 
 friends that his manuscript, arranged and completed, should take the 
 form of a volume. The manuscript was given to us in a not very good 
 condition. Sensier told Millet's life up to 1864, but for the following 
 ten years had only put together documents and notes, with here and 
 there, and only for a few episodes, a little editorial work ; and even 
 in the advanced parts were many imperfect pages, which the writer, 
 interrupted by illness, had left for quieter days — days which never 
 came. We have performed our work without changing the thought 
 of the chief editor, but allowing ourselves to correct some historical 
 mistakes. We have used all the author's notes, and we can offer com- 
 plete, if not perfect, the manuscript which Sensier cared more for 
 than for anything he had written, because it commemorated his 
 dearest friend. 
 
 Alfred Sensier has drawn his own portrait in a few lines, which 
 serve as preface to his Souvenirs stir Theodore Rousseau^ He con- 
 fesses that he is no professional critic, that he can not analyze, or half 
 admire, and that when he is once won, he has the "faith of a coal- 
 heaver." This, in fact, is his fault, — it is also his best quality. 
 Along with his illustrious friends he was mixed up in academic 
 disputes where he had to speak loud to be heard at all, persuaded, 
 like them, that victory is the price of conviction and persistence. 
 
 Paul Mantz. 
 
AUTHORS PREFACE, 
 
 ^T^HE great English painter, John Constable, the renewer of 
 
 modern landscape, died in i8j'/. A friend, himself an artist, 
 the admirer of his talent and the companion of his entire life, undertook 
 to bring together his correspondence, writings, and conversations, 
 and to publish them, with annotations, under the title, Memoirs of 
 John Constable, R. A.'' Charles Leslie, in a book written with fra- 
 ternal ajfection, tells the sufferings, the doubts, and the joys of the 
 miller who became a landscape-painter. 
 
 We have neither the talent nor the knowledge of Charles Leslie^ 
 a learned and clever 7nan, but we are scarcely less rich than he — our 
 hands are full of letters and notes, and our 7nind is full of memories. 
 For more tha?i thirty years we lived Millefs life, receiving his 
 confidences and complaints, and knowing his innermost thoughts. 
 We loved him ; he knew our affection for him, and withheld no 
 confi.dences from us. 
 
 Millet had a siffering and melancholy nature , but he was first 
 of all a man of strong convictions. Faithful and proud in his 
 religio7i and his art, to these he sacrificed pleasure, repose, arid even 
 his life, which was shortened by his struggles. 
 
 We therefore publish a life of Millet from his own words and 
 testimony. There is nothing to hide. Everything is healthy , pure, 
 and instructive. 
 
 2 
 
 IX 
 
X 
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 We have copied the greater part of the documents from Millef s 
 own handwi^iting, accompanied by his conversations^ our own explana- 
 tions^ and our own personal reflections. We have not fudged our 
 friend, but we have attempted to defend him from attacks, and to 
 show him as he see^ncd to us during the thirty years of our friend- 
 ship. Even if it is possible to have more tJian one opinion of his talent, 
 his life must be reckoned that of a sage, a courageous worker, a 
 loving father, and a devoted comrade. His biography is so diversified, 
 so different froin our ordinary existence, that if we had chose7i to 
 change the names the book might have passed for a romance, — the 
 situations are so moviiig, the resignation is so incredible, and the action 
 so varied. And yet the recital we have to make is but a true and 
 faithful picture. The reader will soon recognize this fact. We 
 have invented nothing, ifnagined nothing. 
 
 Millet is to our minds a great figure in art, a product of a 
 fertile field, — a new man, zvith healthy ideas, a clear brain, a sure 
 and powerful hand. He celebrated his own daily life, his race, his 
 work as a peasant. He gave our school a fructifying thought ; 
 others tJian ourselves 7nay develop more clearly its importance. 
 
 People wished to consider him a revolutionary or a pedant. It 
 is time such mistakes should cease. Millet is not the only one in 
 France who has spoken words of power concerning the unfortunate 
 maji destined to win his bread by tJie sweat of his brow. La Bruyere 
 was not persecuted for having made a sublime and fierce portraiture 
 of human misery. Montaigne and La Fontaine exJiibited the man 
 of the fields, drawn from nature, with the iridelible mar^ks of his 
 origin and suffering. In our own day a great thinker, Chateaubriand, 
 has painted, with all the sadness and poetry of his style, the poor 
 laborer of our country : If, returning to the chateau, I met a laborer 
 at the edge of a field, I stopped to look at this ma7t, born amid the 
 grain wJiere he will be reaped, and tzirning up with his plow, as it 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 XI 
 
 ivere, the ground of his tomb ; mixing his burning sweat with the 
 icy rain of autumn. The furrow he had just tur7ied was a monument 
 destined to outlive him. I have seen the pyramids of Egypt and 
 the forgotten furrows tender our heather: both alike bear witness to 
 the works of man and the sJiortness of his days.'' 
 
 Like these masters, Millet looked for beauty in the expression^ 
 and expression in the typical figure of the workman in the fields. 
 He knew as well as aiiy one zvhere to find the beauty of Apollo, the 
 regularity, delicacy, and distinction of civilized races. He was not 
 ignorant of miles of selection ; he had read the gra^nmar of plastic 
 art. He had seen, as zvell as others, the " Jiaiidsome fellow " of Jiis own 
 village and the pretty girls of the country, but he sought to characterize^ 
 with the whole force of his mind and all the memories of his 
 heart, the painful and inexplicable condition of the hu7nan creature 
 upon earth. 
 
 For Millet, the man of the soil represents the whole human 
 family ; the laborer gave him the clearest type of our toil and our 
 suffering. The peasant is to him a living being who formulates, 
 more strongly and clearly than any other man, the image, the 
 symbolical figure of humanity. Millet, however, is neither a discour- 
 aged nor a sad man. He is a laborer who loves his field — plows, 
 sows, and reaps it. His field is art. His inspiration is life, is 
 nature — which he loved with all his strength. Let none seek to 
 find in him anything but a pious and compassio7iate soul, who speaks 
 from his heart. And if, before a painting or a drawing by Millet, 
 we are shocked by the roughness of his hand, the unusualness of his 
 subject, the unexpectedness of his composition, let time do its zvork, 
 and, like the artist, let us go and look at the plains, the forest, and the 
 sky ; let us forget for a 7nome7it our fashions and traditions, and 
 we will feel the same strengthening breath that animated Millet. 
 Seeing the rustic family occupied in the works of the fields with 
 
xii 
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 anxious inind^ resigned attitude, and slow and painful gesture, we 
 will co7ne back to Millet, and he that understands him will say : Here 
 is a painter who has given a place to the humblest ; a poet who has 
 raised to hojior those whom the world ignores, and a good man 
 whose work encourages and consoles. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter. Page, 
 
 I. Millet's Family and Birth — Recollections of his Child- 
 hood IN Normandy 17 
 
 II. Millet begins his Art Studies ..... 39 
 
 III. Millet in Paris — First Visits to the Luxembourg and 
 
 the Louvre — Enters Delaroche's Studio ... 47 
 
 IV. Millet Begins Life as an Artist — His First and Second 
 
 Marriages — Settles in Paris — The Revolution of 
 1848 — Rousseau ....... 57 
 
 V. Millet at Barbizon — "The Sower" — Deaths of his 
 
 Grandmother and Mother ...... 83 
 
 VI. Americans in Barbizon — Hard Times — Two Visits to 
 
 Normandy ......... 100 
 
 VII. The Universal Exhibition of 1855 — The Invisible Ameri- 
 can — Millet's Anxieties — His Artistic Progress — 
 
 "The Gleaners" 112 
 
 VIII. "The Angelus" — "Death and the Wood-cutter" — Visits 
 
 FROM Decamps — A Three Years' Contract . . 128 
 IX. The Salon of 1861 — A Suicide in Barbizon — "Peasant 
 
 Leaning on his Hoe" — Millet's Confession of Faith 144 
 X. Illustrations of Theocritus — Interest in Delacroix — In 
 Japanese Art — "Shepherds Bringing Home a New- 
 born Calf" 164 
 
 XL Millet's Decorative Paintings — Death of his Sister 
 
 Emilie — Visit to Vichy 178 
 
 XIL The Universal Exhibition of 1867 — Death of Rousseau 
 — Millet made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor — 
 Visit to Switzerland with Sensier — The War with 
 Germany — Millet at Cherbourg — He Revisits his 
 
 Birthplace, with Sensier 188 
 
 XIII. Millet's Last Years 207 
 
 Appendix .......... 223 
 
 Index ....... . 226 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS: 
 
 FROM millet's WORKS. 
 
 The Sower. Photograph from Oil Painting, by A. Braun & Co. 
 
 Engraved on Wood by T. Cole. Frontispiece. 
 Portrait of Millet (1846-7). Crayon. Collection of Mile. Sensier. 
 
 Photo-Electrotype Co.'s Reproduction of Heliogravure Dujardin 16 
 House where Millet was born : village of Gruchy, Normandy. 
 
 Pastel. Collection of M. Feuardent, Sr. .... Yves & Barret 23 
 A Spinner. Lead Pencil. Collection of Mile. Marguerite Sensier. . Yves & Barret 29 
 Portrait of Madame Millet. Crayon. Collection of M. Georges Petit. 
 
 Yves & Barret 63 
 
 CEdipus being taken from the Tree. Etching by M. Edmond Hedouin, 
 
 after Oil Painting. Collection of M. Otlet Yves & Barret 69 
 
 Portrait of Millet (1847). Crayon. Collection of Mile. Marguerite Sensier. 
 
 Yves & Barret 75 
 
 The Bather. Crayon. Collection of Mile. Marguerite Sensier. . Yves & Barret 79 
 Noon. Pen and Ink. Collection of Mile. Marguerite Sensier. . Yves & Barret 82 
 Plain of Barbizon : Evening. Crayon. Collection of Mile. Marguerite Sensier. 
 
 Yves & Bar.ret 85 
 
 Going to Work. Etching Yves & Barret 91 
 
 The Old Wood-cutter. Crayon. Collection of M. Gustave Robert. Yves & Barret 97 
 The New-born. Crayon. Collection of M. Georges Petit. . . Yves & Barret 103 
 The Reaper. Drawing on Wood. Engraved by M. AdrienvLavieille. 
 
 American Photo-Engraving Co. 109 
 
 The Spaders. Etching Engraved on Wood, by T. H. Heard 115 
 
 The Gleaners. Crayon. Collection of M. Alfred Lebrun. . . Yves & Barret 121 
 
 Sabots, and Signature 127 
 
 The Angelus. Lithograph, by M. Emile Vernier, after Oil Painting in Collection of 
 
 M. John W^ilson . Yves & Barret 129 
 
 The Sheep-shearers. Crayon. Collection of M. Alfred Lebrun. . Yves & Barret 135 
 
 Woman Carding Wool. Etching. Yves & Barret 155 
 
 The Resurrection. Crayon. Collection of M. Charles Tillot. . Yves & Barret 161 
 Shepherdess. Pen and Ink. Collection of M. Alfred Lebrun. . Yves & Barret 173 
 The Washerwomen. Crayon. Collection of M. Alfred Sensier. . Yves & Barret 181 
 
 Shepherdess Knitting. Etching. Yves & Barret 195 
 
 Woman Carrying Milk. Crayon. Collection of M. Alfred Lebrun. Yves & Barret 203 
 The First Steps. Drawing. Collection of M. Georges Petit. . Yves & Barret 211 
 Shepherdess with Sheep. Drawing, in Collection of M. Georges Petit. 
 
 Yves & Barret 217 
 
 Fac-simile of Letter by Millet (1867). . . „ 222 
 
PORTRAIT OF MILLET (1846-7). 
 
JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 1. 
 
 Millefs Family and Birth — Recollections of his 
 Childhood in Normandy. 
 
 'HE harbor of Cherbourg is bounded on the east by Point Fer- 
 
 X manville, and on the west by Cape de la Hague. Seen from the 
 sea, the country of La Hague looks desolate and forbidding. High 
 granite cliffs surround it on all sides. Masses of black rock, thrown 
 up in the volcanic age, stand out from the water in all sorts of strange 
 and jagged shapes. The shores, covered with sharp points and 
 needles which might be iron or steel, give it the look of an uninhab- 
 itable land. But when you reach the heights, the aspect changes and 
 becomes bright ; plowed fields, pastures of sheep and cows, woods 
 and houses, show that the country is fertile and kindly. In the fold 
 of a little valley, open toward the sea, lies the hamlet of Gruchy, 
 belonging to the parish and commune of Greville. 
 
 Forty years ago a family of laborers lived there, who, from father 
 to son, tilled their land. This family, named Millet, consisted of a 
 
 3 
 
1 8 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 grandmother, a widow, her son and his wife, eight children, and one 
 or two servants. The grandfather, Nicolas Millet, had been dead 
 some fifteen years. The grandmother had brought up all the children 
 with the care which the babies of Normandy enjoy, — according to 
 the custom of the country, the grandmother has charge of their first 
 years, the mother being too busy with the work of the fields and the 
 stables. 
 
 Louise Jumelin, widow of Nicolas Millet, the grandmother, came 
 from Saint-Germain-le-Gaillard, some leagues from Greville ; her 
 family, of the old race of the country, had strong heads and warm 
 hearts. One brother belonged to a religious order. Another, a clever 
 chemist, was a man of some note; a third, though a miller in the 
 Hochet valley, spent his leisure reading Pascal, Nicole, the writers of 
 Port Royal, and philosophers like Montaigne and Charron. He was 
 not a reasoner, but a strong-headed fellow, full of good sense and 
 uprightness. An old sister named Bonne, whom they called Bonnotte, 
 cared for the children with untiring devotion. Bonnotte was one of 
 Millet's dearest remembrances ; a thoroughly faithful creature, think- 
 ing of everything and everybody but herself Another brother 
 Jumelin, a great walker, went to Paris on foot, without rest, in two 
 days and two nights. He had knocked about the world a good 
 deal. At Guadaloupe he became overseer on a plantation, and 
 came back with some money to the hamlet of Pieux, where he 
 worked a little farm. 
 
 The grandmother was like her family, and she rivaled her rela- 
 tions both in wisdom and fervor. She was a worthy peasant- woman, 
 talking patois and wearing the dress and cap of La Hague. Humility 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. IQ 
 
 was one of her virtues. All her strength was concentrated in the love 
 of God, doing her duty, and the love of her family. Full of rehgious 
 fire, harsh toward herself, gentle and charitable to others, she passed 
 her days in good deeds, having always before her the example of the 
 saints. Her conscientious scruples went so far that at the least doubt 
 she asked counsel of the cure of her village; and she was so rigid in 
 her duties as grandmother that she never allowed herself to inflict the 
 shghtest punishment upon her grandchildren in a moment of impa- 
 tience, but waited until the next day, in order to explain to them in 
 cool blood the importance of the fault and the justice of the punish- 
 ment. Her charity was boundless. She had the old traditions of 
 hospitality and respect for the poor. If a peddler passed, he did 
 not need to ask for lodging ; he knew the door of the Millet house 
 was always open. The beggars came there as if to a home. The 
 grandmother, with a curtsy, made them draw near the fire, gave 
 them food and lodging, talked of the affairs of the neighborhood, 
 and, when they left, filled their wallets. 
 
 Her son, Jean-Louis-Nicolas Millet, was a simple and gentle 
 soul, pure in his life and highly respected by his neighbors. If 
 the village jokes were rather coarse, and Jean-Louis came near 
 enough to hear, they said: "Hush! here's Millet." He had a 
 contemplative mind and a musical temperament, highly developed. 
 A singer in the parish ,church, he directed with intelligence the 
 country choristers to whom the people came to listen for miles 
 around. At that time the congregation responded to the chanting 
 of the priest and the choir. Jean- Louis Millet picked out the 
 best voices and taught them. Millet had some chants which his 
 
20 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 father had written down, and which looked Hke the work of a 
 scribe of the fourteenth century. 
 
 Sunday, after mass, Jean-Louis hked to receive his relations and 
 friends, and there, at home, in the midst of his family, he celebrated 
 the Lord's day like a patriarch, offering them the bountiful and simple 
 meal of a peasant who wishes to honor his guests. This worthy man 
 doubtless ignored the germs of art which existed in himself He was 
 absorbed by work until the hour of his death ; but his nature was 
 more refined than his circumstances. He died without knowing his 
 own worth and gifts. A confused instinct, however, sometimes showed 
 itself Taking a bit of grass, he would say to his son Frangois : 
 See how fine ! Look at that tree — how large and beautiful ! It is 
 as beautiful as a flower ! " From his window, looking at a depression 
 in the hill-side: " See !" he would say; ''that house half-buried by 
 the field is good ; it seems to me that it ought to be drawn that way." 
 Sometimes with a little clay he tried to model, or with a knife he 
 would cut in the wood an animal or a plant. Tall, slender, his head 
 covered with long black curls, gentle eyes and beautiful hands — such 
 was the father of Jean-Frangois Millet. 
 
 His mother, Aimee-Henriette- Adelaide Henry, born at Sainte- 
 Croix- Hague, belonged to a race of rich farmers who at one 
 time were called gentlemen. They were called the Henry du 
 Perrons. She was entirely engrossed in her household, her children, 
 and her work. Pious, but not given to the spiritual exaltation 
 of the Jumelin family, she lived for her work and in obedience 
 to her husband. The family of Henry du Perron was composed of 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 21 
 
 several children, who all married and lived in Sainte- Croix. Millet 
 remembered his mother saying that the home of her parents was 
 quite an important place, with its big buildings of granite, and its 
 fine court-yard shaded by old trees, under which the ox-carts and 
 plow stood around a water-trough. The house was said to have 
 been a noble house a century before, which, in time of trouble, had 
 fallen into the hands of peasants. Perhaps the Henry du Perrons 
 were themselves the descendants of the fallen masters. 
 
 Another relation whom Millet always spoke of with feeling was 
 his great-uncle, Charles Millet, priest of the diocese of Avranche. 
 Before the Revolution he had taken orders and read mass, but when 
 the law allowed him to return to civil life, the Abbe Millet came back 
 to his village. He wished to remain faithful to his vows, and, in spite 
 of the danger, he became a laborer in sabots and soutane, and would 
 never lay aside his priestly garments. He might be seen reading his 
 breviary on the high fields overlooking the sea, following the plow, or 
 moving blocks of stone to wall in the family acres. He taught the 
 older children of the family to read. During the Revolution his 
 liberty and even his life had been threatened because he would not 
 take the oath to the Constitution, which he believed to be hostile 
 to the Pope. 
 
 This excellent and faithful man passed his days in field-work 
 and contemplation, and gave to his nephews the pattern of a spot- 
 less life. If he had a furrow to plow or a garden to hoe, he 
 tucked his priest's coat into his belt, put his missal in his pocket, 
 and went cheerfully to work. He saw that his nephew needed help ; 
 
22 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 for, if the life at Gruchy was at all comfortable, it was at the price 
 of untiring exertion. The steep fields made the work heavy, and life 
 on land and sea required very hard and often very dangerous labor. 
 
 For the people of the neighborhood, the sea was an inheritance. 
 Gruchy had no fishermen, but they got from the beach a manure, 
 which the horses and mules had to carry up the steep, narrow paths 
 to the fields above. They were always watching the wrecks, to seize 
 them before they were carried out again ; and after great storms whole 
 banks of sea-weed came up on the waves. Then the entire village, 
 armed with long rakes, rushed to the sea-shore to reap the sea-weed 
 — a rich but dangerous harvest Some of the men of Gruchy were 
 hired by smugglers, and spent long nights in avoiding the coast- 
 guards. The Millets never indulged in this suspicious industry. 
 ''We never ate that bread," said Millet; "my grandmother would 
 have been too unhappy about it." 
 
 Millet, the painter of peasants, was born October 4th, 18 14, in 
 the village of Gruchy, commune of Greville, canton of Baumont 
 (Manche). He was the second child of Jean- Louis- Nicolas Millet, 
 farmer, and his legal wife, Aimee-Henriette- Adelaide Henry. The 
 eldest child was a daughter (Emilie), who later married an inhabitant 
 of the village, named Lefevre. 
 
 His grandmother was his godmother. She called him Jean, after 
 his father, and Francois, after a saint whom she loved and whose pro- 
 tection she constantly invoked. St. Francis of Assisi, the faithful 
 observer of the things of nature, was a happy choice of a saint for 
 the man who, later, was to be the passionate lover of the works of 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 25 
 
 God. Proud of having a boy to rear, the grandmother tended him as 
 her own child and her heart's favorite. In the vague recollections of 
 his babyhood, Millet could always see her busy about him, rocking 
 him, warming him in her bosom, and singing all day long songs which 
 delighted him. I have lived more than thirty years in Millet's inti- 
 macy, and I know that the thought of her face, as nurse and comforter, 
 was an ever-recurring image in the heart of her grandson. While 
 he was still a little child, she would come to his bedside in the 
 morning, and say, gently: Wake up, my little Frangois; you 
 don't know how long the birds have been singing the glory of 
 God ! " Her religion, as Millet told me later, was mixed with her love 
 of nature. All that was beautiful, terrible, or inexplicable seemed 
 to her the work of the Creator, to whose will she bowed. " It was 
 a beautiful religion," added he, " for it gave her the strength to love 
 so deeply and unselfishly. She was always ready to work for others, 
 to excuse their faults, to pity or to help them." 
 
 I have now come to the notes which Millet himself gave me, 
 when I begged him to write out his youthful remembrances. I 
 possess many pages of manuscript testifying to his love of his family 
 and home, and to the sufferings of his life in Cherbourg and Paris ; 
 but the time has not come to say all, — so of these sketches, written 
 by Millet himself, I will only publish as much as propriety allows. 
 When a whole generation has passed away, we shall know a corner of 
 Millet's heart which we may not now unveil — his resignation, his 
 knowledge of men, and how much their ignorance of what is good 
 and generous made him suffer. Here are the precious lines written 
 by Millet concerning his childhood : 
 4 
 
26 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 " I remember waking one morning in my little bed and hearing the voices 
 of people in the room. With the voices sounded a sort of burrr, which stopped 
 now and then and began again. It was the somid of the spinning-wheels, and 
 the voices of the women spinning and carding wool. The dust of the room 
 came and danced in the sunshine which one small, high window let in. I have 
 often seen the sun and the dust in the same way, for the house fronted east. 
 In the corner of the room was a big bed, covered by a counterpane with wide 
 stripes of red and brown, falling down to the floor; next to the window at the 
 foot of the bed, against the wall, a great wardrobe, brown too. It is all like a 
 vague dream. If I had to recall, even a little, the faces of the poor spinners, 
 all my efforts would be in vain, for, although I grew up before they died, 
 I remember their names only because I have heard them spoken in the 
 family. 
 
 " One was a great-aunt whose name was Jeanne. The other was a 
 spinner by trade, who often came to the house, and whose name was Colombe 
 Gamache. This is my earliest recollection. I must have been very young 
 when I received that impression, for more distinct images seem to have been 
 made after a lapse of time. 
 
 " I only remember indescribable impressions, such as hearing, on waking, 
 the coming and going in the house, the geese cackling in the court-yard, the 
 cock-crowing, the beat of the flail on the l^arn floor — all sounds in my ears 
 out of which no particular emotion came. 
 
 " Here is a Httle clearer fact. The commune had had new bells made, 
 two of the old ones having been carried away to make cannon and the third 
 having been broken (as I heard afterward). My mother was curious to see the 
 new bells, which were deposited in the church, waiting to be baptized before 
 being hung in the tower, and she took me with her. She was accompanied by 
 a girl named Julie Lecacheux, whom I afterward knew very well. I remember 
 how struck I was at finding myself in a place so terribly vast as the church, 
 which seemed to me bigger than a barn, and also with the beauty of the 
 great windows, with lozenge-shaped leads. 
 
 We saw the bells, all on the ground. They, too, seemed enormous, for 
 they were much larger than I was; and then (what probably fixed the whole 
 scene in my mind) Julie Lecacheux, who held a very big key in her hand, 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 27 
 
 probably that of the church, began to strike the largest bell, which gave out a 
 great sound, filling me with awe. I have never forgotten that blow of the 
 key on the bell. 
 
 " I had a great-uncle who was a priest ; he was very fond of me, and 
 trotted me about with him continually. He took me once to a house where he 
 often went. The lady of the house was elderly, and remains in my mind as the 
 type of a lady of the olden time. She petted and kissed me, and gave me 
 a great honey-cake, and, besides, a peacock's feather. I remember how 
 delicious I thought the honey, and how beautiful the feather ! I had already 
 been struck with admiration at seeing, as we entered the court-yard, two 
 peacocks perched in a big tree, and I could not get over the fine eyes in 
 their tails. 
 
 " Sometimes my great-uncle took me to Eculleville, a little commune 
 adjoining. The house to which he took me was a sort of seigniorial dwelling, 
 which was called the Eculleville mansion. There was a servant named 
 Fanchon. The head of the house, whom I never knew, had a taste foi 
 rarities, and had planted some pine-trees. You would have had to go a 
 great way to find so many elsewhere. Fanchon occasionally gave me some 
 pine-cones, which filled me with delight. 
 
 " My poor great-uncle was so afraid of something happening to me that 
 if I were not beside him he could not breathe. As I was already big enough 
 to run fast, I went off one day with some other boys, and we went down to the 
 sea-shore. Looking for me everywhere, and not finding me, he went toward 
 the sea, and saw me leaning over the pools which the sea left at ebb-tide, 
 and where I was trying to catch bull-heads. He called me with such a cry 
 of horror that I jumped up, and saw him on the cliff making an urgent sign 
 for me to come up. I did not let him repeat it, for he had frightened me ; if 
 there had been another way than the narrow path at the top of which he was 
 waiting for me, I would have gone up it, but the clifi" was too steep. 
 
 " When he had me up safe, he got angry. He took his three-cornered 
 hat and beat me with it, and as the cliff was still very steep toward the 
 village, and my Httle legs did not carry me very fast, he followed me, 
 beating me with his hat, and as red as a cock with anger. At each blow he 
 would say: 'Ah, Fll help you mount.' It gave me a great fear of the three- 
 
28 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 cornered hat. Poor uncle ! All the following night he had nightmares ; 
 he woke up every little while, crying out that I was falling down the cliff. 
 
 " As I was not of an age to understand a tenderness which showed itself 
 by blows with a hat, I gave him many another torment. Once during mass I 
 was whispering with some other boys ; he from his place coughed to make me 
 quiet ; I stopped a moment, and then began again. Then he came and took 
 me by the arm, to make me kneel down under the lamp in the middle of the 
 choir. Without knowing how (for I was never so silly as to resist the punish- 
 ments which I received), somehow I caught my foot in his surplice and tore 
 it. Overcome by such an act of impiety, he left me without the punishment 
 he had intended inflicting, and went back, horrified, to his place until the end 
 of the mass. I had no consciousness of the outrage of which I had been 
 guilty, and was very much surprised, when all had returned from mass, to hear 
 him, with great emotion, tell the whole family the abomination I had com- 
 mitted, and which he looked upon as a sort of sacrilege. Such an action to a 
 priest made him predict the most fearful things for my future. 
 
 " The consternation of the whole family is indescribable. I did not 
 understand why I had become suddenly an object of horror, and my fright 
 could not have been greater. The rest I have forgotten. Time has dropped 
 a veil over that, as over other things. I don't know whether I was punished 
 or not. 
 
 " This I remember hearing about my great-uncle ; he was brother of my 
 father's father. He had been a laborer all his life, and had become a priest 
 rather late. I think he had a little church at the time of the Revolution. I 
 know that he was persecuted, for I have heard that men came to search the 
 house of my grandfather, to whom he had returned, and that they made their 
 search in the most brutal manner. He was very inventive, and had contrived 
 a hiding-place which communicated with his bed, and into which he threw 
 himself when any one came. One day they entered so suddenly that the bed 
 had not had time to cool, and although they were told that he was not there, 
 they cried : 
 
 " ' Yes, yes, he is here, — the bed is still warm, — but he has found some 
 way of getting off' 
 
 " He heard them. They turned the house upside down in their fury, 
 and went away. 
 
A Spinner. 
 
I 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 31 
 
 " He said mass, whenever he could, in the house, and I have still the 
 leaden chalice which he used. After the Revolution, he remained with his 
 brother and performed the duties of vicar of the parish. He went every 
 morning to the church to say mass. After breakfast, he went to work in the 
 fields. He almost always took me with him. Arrived at the field, he took 
 off his soutane and worked in shirt-sleeves and breeches. He had the strength 
 of a Hercules. There still exist, and they will last a long time, some great 
 walls which he built to hold up a piece of sliding ground. These walls are 
 very high, and built of immense stones. They have a cyclopean look. I 
 have heard my grandmother and my father say that he allowed no one to 
 help him even to place the heaviest stones, and some of them would require 
 the combined strength of five or six men, and then using levers. 
 
 " He had a most excellent heart. He taught, for the love of God, the 
 poor children of the commune, whose parents could not send them to school. 
 He even taught them a little Latin. This made his confreres of the neigh- 
 boring communes very indignant ; they went so far as to write about it to the 
 bishop of Coutances. I have found among some old papers the rough draft 
 of the letter he addressed to the bishop in justification, and in which he said 
 that he lived with his brother, who was a laborer, that in the commune there 
 were very poor children who would have been deprived of every sort of 
 instruction, that pity had decided him to teach them what he could, and he 
 begged the bishop in the name of charity not to prevent him from teaching 
 these poor little ones to read. I think T have heard that the bishop finally 
 consented to let him continue. Very magnanimous, to be sure i * * * 
 When he died I was about seven years old, and it is curious to realize how 
 deep are the impressions of an early age, and what an indelible mark they 
 leave upon the character. My childish mind was filled with stories of ghosts 
 and all sorts of supernatural things. To this day I enjoy them, but whether I 
 believe them or not I can not say. The day that my great-uncle was buried, 
 I heard them speaking in a mysterious way about the manner in which he 
 should be buried. They said that at the head, on the cofhn, must be laid 
 some big stones covered with bundles of hay ; ' their instrument got embar- 
 rassed in the straw, and then broke on the stones, which made it impossible 
 for them to hook the head and draw the body out of the grave.' Afterward I 
 
32 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 knew what this mysterious language meant, but from the time of the burial, 
 several neighbors, with the servant of the house, who all had hot cider to 
 drink, passed the night, armed with guns and scythes, watching the grave. 
 This guard was continued for about a month. After that they said there was 
 no more danger. This was the reason : some men were said to make a pro- 
 fession of digging up bodies for doctors. They knew when a person died in a 
 commune, and they came immediately at night to steal it. Their way of 
 doing was to take a long screw and work through the earth and the coffin, 
 catching the head of the dead man ; with a lever they drew the body out of 
 the grave without disturbing the earth. They had been met leading the dead 
 man, covered with a cloak, holding him under the arms and talking to him as 
 if he were a drunken man, shaking him and telling him to stand up. Others 
 were seen with the body behind them on horseback, the arms held around the 
 waist of the rider, and always covered with a great cloak, but the feet of the 
 body were seen below the cloak. 
 
 " Some months before the death of my great-uncle I had been sent to 
 school, and I remember well that the day he died the maid-servant was sent 
 to bring me home, so that I should not be seen playing in the road under 
 such solemn circumstances. Before sending me to school I had, doubtless, 
 at home learnt my letters and how to spell, as the other children thought me 
 very clever. Heaven knows what they called clever. My introduction to the 
 school was for the afternoon class. When I arrived in the court-yard where 
 the children were playing, the first thing I did was to fight. The bigger 
 children who brought me were proud of bringing to school a child of six 
 and a half who already knew his letters, and besides I was large for my 
 age, and so strong that they assured me that there was not one of my 
 age, or even of seven, who could beat me. There were none there less 
 than seven, and as they were all anxious to make sure of the matter, they 
 brought up a boy who was considered one of the strongest, to make us fight. 
 It must be confessed that we had no very powerful reasons for not liking each 
 other, and perhaps the combat was rather lukewarm. But they had a way of 
 interesting the honor of the parties concerned. They took a chip, and putting 
 it on the shoulder of one, said to the other, ' I bet you don't dare knock that 
 chip off ! ' If you did not want to seem a coward, you knocked it off. The 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 33 
 
 other, of course, could not endure such an insult, so the battle was in earnest. 
 The big ones excited those whose side they had taken, and the fighters were 
 not separated. One must conquer. I turned out the stronger, and covered 
 myself with glory. Those who were for me were very proud, and said: 
 ' Millet is only six and a half, and he has beaten a boy more than seven 
 years old.' " 
 
 When twelve years old, Fran9ois Millet went to be confirmed at 
 the church of Greville. He could not learn anything- by heart, but a 
 young vicar found his answers so full of good sense that he asked 
 him if he did not want to learn Latin. 
 
 "With Latin, my boy, you can become a priest or a doctor." 
 No," said the child; I don't wish to be either; I wish to stay 
 with my parents." 
 
 Come, all the same," said the vicar; "you will learn." 
 
 So the child went to the parsonage with several little compan- 
 ions. He translated the Epitome Histories Sacrce and the Selectee e 
 Profanis. Virgil came under his eyes, — although translated by the 
 Abbe Desfontaines, this book, half Latin, half French, charmed him so 
 much that he could not stop reading it. The Bucolics and Georgics 
 captivated his mind. At the words of Virgil, " It is the hour when 
 the great shadows descend toward the plain," the child was filled 
 with emotion; the book revealed to him his own surroundings — the 
 life in which he was growing up. Some time after, the vicar, the 
 Abbe Herpent, was sent to the curacy of Heauville, a village a few 
 miles from Greville. It was decided that the little Frangois should 
 go with the Abbe to continue his lessons. After four or five months 
 with the Abbe Herpent, he begged his grandmother so hard not 
 
 5 
 
 1 
 
34 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 to be made to leave home again, that it was decided that he should 
 not go. A new vicar had come to the village, the Abbe Jean 
 Lebrisseux, who was willing to continue the child's instruction. The 
 good man liked to make him talk about his first impressions, and 
 often took him with him to see the cure of Greville, a gentle and 
 sickly man, who encouraged the child in his confidences. The 
 school-boy told him his innocent love of nature, his wonder at the 
 clouds and their movements, his thoughts about the sky, and the 
 dangers of the ocean, his reading of the Bible and Virgil, and the 
 poor cure would say : 
 
 *' Ah, poor child, you have a heart that will give you trouble 
 one of these days ; you don't know how much you will have 
 to suffer ! " 
 
 A professor of the College of Versailles, who was born in the 
 neighborhood, took Frangois out walking one day, and was greatly 
 astonished by the boy's observations, and by the extraordinarily 
 poetic turn of his mind. 
 
 The schooling of Millet, begun by the good vicar Jean Lebris- 
 seux, was often interrupted by field-work. He did not go any further 
 than the Appendix de Diis et Heroibiis Poeticis of P. Jouvency, and 
 had to give up Virgil. He was soon obliged to be a serious help to 
 his father, and to devote all his time to the rough farm-work. He 
 was the eldest of the sons, and in this lay a duty which Fran9ois 
 accepted without regret. He began to work beside his father and 
 the " hands," to mow, make hay, bind the sheaves, thresh, winnow, 
 spread manure, plow, sow, — in a word, all the work which makes the 
 daily life of the peasant. So he spent years, the companion of his 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 35 
 
 father and mother in the hardest labor, his only amusement the 
 gatherings of the family. 
 
 Millet devoured hungrily the books of the home library, the 
 "Lives of the Saints," the "Confessions of St. Augustine," "St. 
 Francis of Sales," "St. Jerome," especially his letters, which he liked 
 to re-read all his life, and the religious philosophers of Port Royal, 
 and Bossuet, and Fenelon. As to Virgil and the Bible, he re-read 
 them, always in Latin, and was so familiar with their language that in 
 his manhood I have never seen a more eloquent translator of these 
 two books. He was not, therefore, as has been said, an ignorant 
 peasant up to the time of his coming to Paris. On the contrary, his 
 education was rapid, and rather by eye and reason than by grammar. 
 As a child he wrote well, and when he reached Cherbourg he was 
 already an educated man, full of reading, and one who did not confuse 
 unhealthy literature with that which could be of use to him. 
 
 At his father's house, in the midst of his work, the vague idea of 
 art began to take form in his mind. Some old engravings in the 
 Bible gave him the desire to imitate them, and every day, at the 
 noonday rest, alone in a room in the house, while his father slept, he 
 studied the perspective of the landscapes before him. He drew the 
 garden, the stables, the fields with the sea for horizon, and often the 
 animals which went by. His father, m.ore watchful than asleep, did 
 not say a word, and sometimes got up softly to peep at what 
 Francois was doing. 
 
 The sea was for Francois Millet the occasion both of study and 
 of profound feeling. He wished to reproduce its greatness and 
 terror. A recollection of the ocean storms remained all his life with 
 
36 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 him. I will give one of his many impressions, which tells in his 
 simple and pathetic way the horrors of a disaster which befell 
 his village : 
 
 " It was All Saints' day ; in the morning we saw that the sea was very 
 rough, and every one said there would be trouble; all the parish was in 
 church ; in the middle of mass we saw a man come in dripping wet, — an old 
 sailor, well known for his bravery. He immediately said that as he came 
 along shore he saw several ships which, driven by a fearful wind, would cer- 
 tainly shipwreck on the coast. 'We must go to their assistance,' said he, 
 louder, ' and I have come to say to all who are willing that we have only 
 just time to put to sea to try and help them.' About fifty men offered them- 
 selves, and, without speaking, followed the old sailor. We got to the shore 
 by going down the cliff, and there we soon saw a terrible sight, — several 
 vessels, one behind the other, driving at a frightful speed against the rocks. 
 
 " Our men put their boats to sea, but they had hardly made ten strokes 
 when one boat filled with water and sunk, the second was overturned with the 
 breakers, and the third thrown up on shore. Happily no one was drowned, 
 and all reached the shore. It was easy to see that our boats would be of no 
 use to the poor people on the ships. 
 
 " Meantime the vessels came nearer, and were only a few fathoms from 
 our black cliffs, which were covered with cormorants. The first, whose masts 
 were gone, came like a great mass. Every one on shore saw it coming; no 
 one dared speak. It seemed to me, though only a child, as if death were 
 playing with a handful of men, whom it intended to crush and swallow. 
 An immense wave lifted itself like an angry mountain, and wrapping the vessel 
 brought her near, and a still higher one threw her upon a rock level with the 
 water. A frightful cracking sound, — the next instant the vessel was filled 
 with w^ater. The sea was covered with wreckage, — planks, masts, and poor 
 drowning creatures. Many swam and then disappeared. Our men threw 
 themselves into the water, and, with the old sailor at their head, made 
 tremendous efforts to save them. Several were brought back, but they were 
 either drowned or broken on the rocks. The sea threw up several hundred. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 37 
 
 and with them merchandise and food. For days following, the people came 
 back after these forlorn waifs of the sea, and stored them, all damaged with the 
 salt water, in their cellars. 
 
 " But this was not all. A second ship approached. The masts were 
 gone. Every one was on the deck, which was full; we saw them all on 
 their knees, and a man in black seemed to bless them. A wave as big as our 
 cliff carried her toward us. We thought we heard a shock like the first, but 
 she held stanch and did not move. The waves beat against her, but she 
 did not budge. She seemed petrified. In an instant every one put to sea, 
 for it was only two gun-shots from shore. A boat was made fast alongside ; 
 our boat was filled instantly ; one of the boats of the ship put off, threw out 
 planks and boxes, and in half an hour every one was on shore. The ship had 
 been saved by a rare accident ; her bowsprit and forepart had got wedged 
 in between two rocks. The wave which had thrown her on the reefs had 
 preserved her as if by a miracle. She was English, and the man who blessed 
 his companions was a bishop. They were taken to the village, and soon after 
 to Cherbourg. 
 
 " We all went back again to the shore. The third ship was thrown on 
 the breakers, hashed into little bits, and no one could be saved. The bodies 
 of the unhappy crew were cast up on the sand. 
 
 "A fourth, fifth, and sixth were lost — ship and cargo — on the rocks. 
 The tempest was terrific. The wind was so violent that it was useless to try 
 to oppose it. It carried off the roofs and the thatch. It whirled so that the 
 birds were killed, — even the gulls, which are accustomed, one would think, to 
 storms. The night was passed in defending the houses. Some covered the 
 roofs with heavy stones, some carried ladders and poles, and made them fast 
 to the roofs. The trees bent to the ground, and cracked and split. The fields 
 were covered with branches and leaves. It was a fearful scourge. The next 
 day, All Souls' day, the men returned to the shore ; it was covered with dead 
 bodies and wreckage. They were taken up and placed in rows along the foot 
 of the cliffs. Several other vessels came in sight ; every one was lost on our 
 coast. It was a desolation like the end of the world. Not one could 
 be saved. The rock smashed them like glass, and threw them in atoms 
 to the cliffs. 
 
38 
 
 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET. 
 
 " Passing a hollow place, I saw a great sail covering what looked like a 
 pile of merchandise. I lifted the corner and saw a heap of dead bodies. I 
 was so frightened that I ran all the way home, where I found mother and 
 grandmother praying for the drowned men. The third day another vessel 
 came. Of this one they found possible to save part of the crew, about ten 
 men, whom they got off the rocks. They were all torn and bruised. They 
 were taken to Gruchy, cared for for a month, and sent to Cherbourg. But 
 the poor wretches were not rid of the sea. They embarked on a vessel going 
 to Havre; a storm took them, and they were all lost. As for the dead, all 
 the horses were employed for a week in carrying them to the cemetery. They 
 were buried in unconsecrated ground ; people said they were not good 
 Christians. 
 
 " Some days after, I found upon the sand a small piece of carved wood, 
 which came, no doubt, from one of the vessels lost on our coast. When 
 my mother saw it, she scolded me well, made the sign of the cross, and bid me 
 carry it back to the place where I found it, and ask God's pardon for my 
 theft. This I hastened to do, very much ashamed of my action. 
 
 " Since that time I have seen many tempests in my country, but none 
 have left with me such an image of destruction, — such an impression of the 
 littleness of man and of the power of the sea." 
 
IT. 
 
 Millet begins his Art Studies. 
 
 IT was thus that Fran9ois spent his early days, in the midst of 
 his family, whom he dearly loved, in the heart of a country 
 which was the source of all his inspiration, reading and drawing, 
 and without thinking of leaving his father's house, — his only ambition 
 to accomplish his duties as a son, to plow his furrow in peace, and to 
 turn up the earth whose odor delighted his young senses. His whole 
 life, he thought, would be passed in this way. Coming home one day 
 from mass, he met an old man, his back bowed, and going wearily 
 home. He was surprised at the perspective and movement of the 
 bent figure. This was for the young peasant the discovery of 
 foreshortening. With one glance he understood the mysteries of 
 planes advancing, retreating, rising, and falling. He came quickly 
 home, and taking a lump of charcoal, drew from memory all the lines 
 he had noted in the action of the old man. When his parents 
 returned from church they instantly recognized it — his first portrait 
 made them laugh. 
 
 39 
 
40 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 Millet was eighteen ; his father was deeply moved by the revela- 
 tion of this unforeseen talent. They talked the matter over, and 
 Frangois admitted that he had some desire to become a painter. 
 His father only said these touching words : 
 
 " My poor Frangois, I see thou art troubled by the idea. I 
 should gladly have sent you to have the trade of painting taught you, 
 which they say is so fine, but you are the oldest boy, and I could not 
 spare you ; now that your brothers are older, I do not wish to pre- 
 vent you from learning that which you are so anxious to know. We 
 will soon go to Cherbourg and find out whether you have talent 
 enough to earn your living by this business." 
 
 Fran9ois then finished two drawings that he had imagined. One 
 represented two shepherds, the first playing the flute at the foot of a 
 tree, the other listening near a hill-side, where sheep were browsing ; 
 the shepherds were in jackets and wooden shoes, like those of his 
 village, the hill-side was a field with apple-trees, belonging to his 
 father. The second drawing represented a starry night — a man 
 coming out of a house and giving some bread to another man, who 
 accepted it anxiously. Under the drawing were the words of St. 
 Luke, in Latin : ''Though he will not rise and give him, because he is 
 his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as 
 many as he needeth." This drawing I have been familiar with for 
 thirty years ; it is the work of a man who already knows the great 
 bearings of art, its effects and resources ; it seems like the sketch 
 of an old master of the seventeenth century. 
 
 There was then giving lessons at Cherbourg a painter called 
 Mouchel, a pupil of the school of David. The father and son went to 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 4 1 
 
 see him, and took the two drawings above mentioned. Mouchel had 
 no sooner seen them than he said to the father : 
 
 You must be joking. That young man there did not make the 
 drawings all alone." 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said the father. I assure you, I saw him make 
 them." 
 
 No, no. I see the method is very awkward, but he never 
 could have composed that — 'tis impossible." 
 
 The Millets asserted so energetically that it was the work of 
 Fran9ois, that Mouchel had to believe it He then turned to the 
 father, and said : 
 
 Well, you will go to perdition for having kept him so long, for 
 your child has the stuff of a great painter ! " 
 
 From that moment the career of Millet was decided ; his father 
 even urged it, and arranged his apprenticeship with Mouchel. Mouchel 
 was a strange and original fellow — he deserves notice in the biogra- 
 phies of Normandy painters. He had studied at the Seminary and 
 had married a good peasant woman, who lived with him at Roule, in 
 a little valley where he cultivated his garden, near a mill which 
 belonged to him, and whose musical tic-tac could be heard in the 
 studio. He loved art to fanaticism. Teniers, Rembrandt, and 
 Brauwer were his idols. He loved the country and animals, and 
 passed hours tete-a-tete with a pig, whose dialect and confidences he 
 pretended to understand. He began, with a great facility and a cer- 
 tain taste, large canvases, which he did not always finish. The cures 
 of the villages asked him for pictures, which he executed promptly, 
 and gave gratis to the churches. He was a sort of anchorite, with a 
 6 
 
42 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 face like St. John the Baptist, illumined with the love of nature and 
 of the rnasters. 
 
 He was first reHgious, then a free-thinker, again came back to 
 the fold of the church. At one time he was laughing at the 
 confessional and quarreling with his cure ; then he would return 
 to the confessional, alarmed at his schismatical liberties. He ended 
 by dying impenitent, refusing to see any black man." 
 
 Millet was two months with Mouchel. He copied engravings 
 and drew from the round. Mouchel would not give him any advice : 
 Draw what you like, choose what you please here, follow your own 
 fancy — go to the museum." He was busy copying at the museum 
 of Cherbourg when the servant of the family came to him with the 
 announcement that his father was dangerously ill. Millet made one 
 fierce rush from Cherbourg to Gruchy. He found his father dying of 
 a brain fever. He had not even the consolation of hearing his voice 
 for the last time, or seeing his eyes turned upon him : the poor man 
 was voiceless and senseless; his brain had already lost consciousness; 
 he could not even feel the loving pressure of his hand in his son's. 
 To Millet it seemed a double death, the death that all men must die, 
 and the death of a father who could not even, like dying Isaac, touch 
 the garment of his child. 
 
 Fran9ois tried to keep the old farm going on in the old way, but 
 his heart was heavy with his bereavement, and beside, art had made 
 itself felt in him. The notabilities of Cherbourg, not seeing the 
 young peasant painting, tried to do something for him. His grand- 
 mother heard some rumors of it, and said : My Fran9ois, you must 
 accept the will of God ; your father, my Jean-Louis, said you should 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER, 43 
 
 be a painter; obey him, and go back to Cherbourg." There he 
 entered the studio of Langlois, who also gave him very Httle advice. 
 A great amusement for Millet at this time was reading. He read 
 everything — from the Almanack boiteux, of Strasbourg, to Paul de 
 Kock, from Homer to Beranger ; he also read with delight Shakspere, 
 Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Cooper, Goethe's "Faust," and German 
 ballads. Victor Hugo and Chateaubriand had especially impressed 
 him. The emphatic style of the author of'Atala" and "Rene" 
 did not displease him ; under his stilted manner he recognized a 
 love of the past, a touching recollection of his family and country, 
 and a bitterness of life which he, too, felt. As to Victor Hugo, his 
 great poetic pictures of the sea and the splendors of the sky, his 
 bronze-like rhythm, shook him like the word of a prophet. He 
 wished to throw out all the exaggerations and make up a Victor 
 Hugo of his own, of two or three volumes, which would have been 
 the Homer of France. The contents of the libraries of Cherbourg 
 were all passed in review, and when he got to Paris he was already a 
 cultivated man, familiar with letters, — though this fact was little seen, 
 as he was suspicious of the opinion of great cities, and scarcely 
 answered questions put to him. He knew a clerk of a library in 
 Cherbourg, who got him books and became his companion and 
 friend. This was M. Feuardent, whose son married, later, Millet's 
 eldest daughter. 
 
 This is what he said about his studious youth : 
 
 " I never studied systematically. At school, when writing from dictation, 
 my task was better written than the others, probably because I read constantly, 
 and the words and phrases were pictured rather in my eyes than in my mind, 
 
44 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 and I instinctively reproduced them. I never followed programmes ; I never 
 learned a lesson by heart; all my time was spent in writing capital letters and 
 drawing. I never could get beyond addition in mathematics, and I do not 
 understand subtraction and the rules following. My reckoning is always in 
 my head, and by ways that I could not explain. I came to Paris with all my 
 ideas of art fixed, and I have never found it necessary to change them. I have 
 been more or less in love with this master, or that method in art, but I have 
 not modified any fundamental opinions. You have seen my first drawing, 
 made at home without a master, without a model, without a guide. I have 
 never done anything different since. You have never seen me paint except in 
 a low tone; demi-tehite is necessary to me in order to sharpen my eyes and 
 clear my thoughts, — it has been my best teacher." 
 
 The young painter from the country made some little noise in the 
 town of Cherbourg. People talked about his work and the boldness 
 of his handling, and the general opinion was that he ought to be sent 
 to Paris to study. On the other hand, Langlois watched the progress 
 of his scholar like a hen who has hatched a young eagle ; he let him 
 exercise himself as he chose, in portraiture or Biblical subjects. 
 Sometimes he got Millet to help him on his religious pictures. At 
 the Church of the Trinity at Cherbourg may be seen two large 
 pictures from sacred history, at which Millet worked with Langlois, 
 on delicate parts, such as the drapery and the hands. Langlois felt, 
 however, that he could not teach Millet anything ; he therefore 
 addressed the municipal council of Cherbourg a petition, which led 
 them to vote an annuity of four hundred francs for Millet's educa- 
 tion. The general council of La Manche added later six hundred 
 francs, which should be paid until the completion of the young artist's 
 studies. Millet told me several times that this annuity did not last 
 long, and that it was far from being sufficient for his needs ; soon 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 45 
 
 the little pension from the town of Cherbourg ceased, through 
 lack of funds. 
 
 It was a great event in the Millet family when Francois departed 
 for a place so far away, — a city which had the reputation of being 
 so corrupt as Paris. Mother and grandmother loaded their dear 
 child with warnings against the seductions of this new Babylon. 
 
 " Remember," the grandmother repeated again and again, 
 remember the virtues of your ancestors ; remember that at the font 
 I promised for you that you should renounce the devil and all his 
 works. I would rather see you dead, dear son, than a renegade, and 
 faithless to the commands of God." 
 
 He went off in a fever of expectation and of distress at leaving 
 these two poor women a prey to all the troubles which beset unpro- 
 tected widows. He took with him some savings which his mother 
 and grandmother gave him at leaving, and which, joined to the 
 pension of the city, made a sum of six hundred francs. He felt 
 embarrassed by so much wealth. 
 
 " I always had my mother and grandmother on my mind, and their need 
 of my arm and my youth. It has always been almost like remorse to think 
 of them, weak and ill at home, when I might have been a prop to their old 
 age ; but their hearts were so motherly that they would not have allowed me 
 to leave my profession to help them. Besides," he would add, " youth has 
 not the sensitiveness of manhood, and a demon pushed me toward Paris. I 
 wanted to see all, know all that a painter can learn. My masters at Cher- 
 bourg had not spoiled me during my apprenticeship. Paris seemed to me 
 the great center of knowledge and a museum of everything fine and great. 
 
 " I went off with a full heart. All that I saw on the way to Paris made 
 me still sadder. The great straight roads, the trees in long lines, the flat 
 fields, the pasture-lands so rich and so filled with animals that they seemed to 
 
46 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET. 
 
 me more like scenes in a theater than reality! Then Paris, black, smoky, 
 muddy, where I arrived at night, and which was to me the most discouraging 
 sensation of all. 
 
 " I got to Paris oi^e Saturday evening in January, in the snow. The 
 light of the street-lamps, almost put out by the fog, the immense quantity of 
 horses and wagons passing and repassing, the narrow streets, the smell and 
 the air of Paris, went to my head and my heart so that I was almost suffocated. 
 I was seized with a sobbing which I could not control. I wanted to get the 
 better of my feelings, but they overcame me with their violence. I could 
 only stop my tears by washing my face with water, which I took from a street- 
 fountain. 
 
 "The coolness gave me courage. A print-seller was there, — I looked at 
 his prints and munched my last apple. The lithographs displeased me very 
 much ; loose scenes of grisetfes, women bathing and at their toilettes, such as 
 Deveria and Maurin then drew ; they seemed to me signs for perfumery or 
 fashion-plates. Paris seemed to me dismal and tasteless. For the first, I 
 went to a little hotel, where I spent the night in a sort of nightmare, in which 
 I saw my home, full of melancholy, with my mother, grandmother, and 
 sister spinning in the evening, weeping and thinking of me, praying that I 
 should escape the perdition of Paris. Then the evil demon drove me on 
 before wonderful pictures, which seemed so beautiful, so brilliant, that it 
 appeared to me they took fire and vanished in a heavenly cloud. 
 
 " My awakening was more earthly. My room was a hole with no light. 
 I got up and rushed to the air. The light had come again, and I regained 
 my calmness and my will. My sadness remained, and I remembered the 
 complaint of Job : ' Let the day perish wherein T was born, and the night in 
 which it was said there is a man child conceived.' 
 
 " So I greeted Paris, not cursing it, but with the terror that came from 
 not comprehending its material and spiritual life, and full, too, of desire to 
 see those famous masters of whom I had heard so much, and some little scraps 
 of whom I had seen at the museum of Cherbourg." 
 
III. 
 
 Millet in Paris — First Visits to the Luxembourg and the 
 Louvre— E7tters Delaroche s Studio. 
 
 IT was in January, 1837, that Millet arrived in Paris. He had sev- 
 eral letters of recommendation for friends or relations of important 
 men in Cherbourg. He went to M. Georges, then an expert in the 
 Royal Museum. Georges received him kindly, and asked him what 
 he could do. Millet unrolled a big drawing, some six feet high, on 
 paper. Georges, surprised, showed it to his friends and pupils, who 
 were there, and who cried out : " We didn't know they could do this 
 in the provinces!" It is very good," repeated M. Georges; you 
 must stay with me ; it will be of great use to you. I can let you see 
 the museums, introduce you to celebrated artists, and get you into 
 the School of the Beaux Arts, where you can compete, and where 
 you will be sure soon to get the prize, at the rate you are going." 
 
 Millet went away, leaving his drawing. He intended returning 
 to see M. Georges, but on the way he thought of the school, the 
 competition for prizes, and the discipline that all who enter a school 
 
 47 
 
48 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 must, of course, submit to. " All this seemed to me a constraint 
 which I could not contemplate without horror. I said to myself 
 that M. Georges, who had been so kind, and seemed so sure of 
 guiding me, — how difficult it would be to make him understand 
 that this way of study, striving to excel others, who were unknown 
 to me, in cleverness and quickness, was antipathetic ! " In fact, 
 Millet resolved not to return to M. Georges, and the drawing was 
 sent back to him later. 
 
 At the house of Monsieur L (to whom he had a letter), they 
 
 gave him a clean little room on the fifth floor, that looked out over 
 the roofs and chimneys of a court-yard : 
 
 " Life at M. L 's was very weary. Mme. L was a cross 
 
 woman, who tried to make me go to see the sights of Paris, — the dancers, 
 the students' balls, — --and who reproached me with my awkward ways and my 
 timidity. The house froze me, and I was only happy on the quays. One 
 day I went to the Chaumiere ; the dances of this pushing crowd of people 
 disgusted me ; I preferred the heavy pleasures and real drunkards of the 
 country. 
 
 "In the beginning of my stay, I had given to Mme. L my trunk, 
 
 containing all my linen and belongings and a few hundred francs. In a month 
 1 had spent fifty francs in pictures and dinners, for I was so wretchedly fed 
 that I was obliged to go and eat at the restaurants where the cabmen congre- 
 gated, one of whom had recognized me as a fellow-townsman. 
 
 "One morning I asked Mme. L for five francs, whereupon she made 
 
 a scene so terrible to me that I threw down the money, and saying, ' Madame, 
 we are quits ! ' I left the house, with thirty sous and the clothes I had on 
 my back. Her husband wrote to say that of course it would be impossible for 
 me to return to their house, but if I would go to his office he would indemnify 
 me for the loss occasioned by the injustice of his wife. . I went. He made 
 many protestations, but gave me nothing. He paid my lodging — about fifty 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 49 
 
 francs — three months later, but was obliged by his wife to ask me not to see 
 him again. A year later I was taken very ill, almost to death. I lost con- 
 sciousness, and was twenty-one days in a sort of lethargy. When I recovered 
 consciousness I found myself in the country, at the house of a friend of M. 
 
 L 's, who had had me carried to Herblay, near Montmorency. It was 
 
 in June, at haying-time ; and while taking my first walk in the garden I tried 
 to mow, and fell fainting. This distressed me greatly. I felt myself no longer 
 a man of the country, and I was humiliated. I recovered, and it was thanks 
 
 to M. L , but how I have never known, as I never saw him again. 
 
 " I never could explain the conduct of Mme. I> . Her servant, 
 
 whom I met once, hinted that she was rather free in her reading, and that I 
 had not understood her game." 
 
 To tell the truth, Millet had not the slightest understanding of 
 this feminine character. It seems that, like Joseph, he met at the out- 
 set of life a " Potiphar's wife." 
 
 " During the first days of my stay in Paris, my fixed idea was to go and 
 see the old museum. I went out early with this intention, yet, being afraid to 
 ask the way for fear of being laughed at, I wandered at random, hoping the 
 museum would come to meet me. I got lost day after day in looking for it. 
 In this search I finally came upon Notre- Dame, which I thought less beau- 
 tiful than the cathedral of Coutances. The Luxembourg seemed to me a fine 
 palace, but too regular, and like the work of a coquettish and mediocre builder. 
 Finally, without knowing how, I found myself on the Pont Neuf, from which I 
 saw a magnificent building which I thought must be the Louvre, from the 
 descriptions I had heard of it. I went to it, and mounted the great stair- way 
 with a beating heart. At last one great object of my life was attained. 
 
 " I had imagined correctly what I should see. It seemed to me that 
 I was in a world of friends, in a family where all that I beheld was the reality 
 of my dreams. For a month the masters were my only occupation during the 
 day. I observed them all, devoured them, analyzed them, and returned to 
 them ceaselessly. The early ones drew me by their admirable expression of 
 
 7 
 
f 
 
 50 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 gentleness, holiness, and fervor; the great Italians, by their knowledge and 
 their charm of composition. Sometimes the arrows of St. Sebastian seemed to 
 go through m.e, when I looked at Mantegna's Martyrs. The masters of that 
 time are magnetic; they give you the joys and sorrows which trouble them; 
 they are incomparable. But when I saw a drawing of Michael Angelo's, — a 
 man in a swoon, — that was another thing! The expression of the relaxed 
 muscles, the planes and modeling of the figure weighed down by physical 
 suffering, gave me a succession of feelings: I was tormented by pain, I pitied 
 him, I suffered with that very body, those very limbs. I saw that he who 
 had done this was capable, with a single figure, to personify the good or 
 evil of all humanity. It was Michael Angelo — that says all. I had already 
 seen mediocre engravings from him in Cherbourg; here I first touched the 
 heart and heard the speech of him who has so haunted me all my life. 
 
 " I then went to the Luxembourg. With the exception of the pictures of 
 Delacroix, which I thought great in gesture, invention, and color, I found 
 nothing remarkable, — everywhere wax figures, conventional costumes, and a 
 disgusting flatness of invention and expression. 
 
 "The ' Elizabeth ' and the 'Princes in the Tower' of Delaroche were 
 there, and I was to go to the studio of Delaroche, — these pictures did not 
 make me wish to go. I could see in them nothing but big illustrations and 
 theatrical effects without real feeling: everywhere posing and stage scenes. The 
 Luxembourg gave me my antipathy to the theater, and although I was not 
 indifferent to the celebrated dramas then being acted, I must confess to having 
 always had a decided repulsion to the exaggerations, the falseness and silliness 
 of actors and actresses. I have since seen something of their little world, and 
 I have become convinced that by always trying to put themselves in some 
 other person's place, they have lost the understanding of their own personality; 
 that they only talk in ' character,' and that truth, common-sense, and the sim- 
 ple feeHng of plastic art are lost to them. To paint well and naturally, I think 
 one should avoid the theater. 
 
 " Many a time I was half inclined to leave Paris and return to my native 
 village, I was so tired of the lonely life I lived. I saw no one, did not speak 
 to a soul, did not dare ask a question, I dreaded ridicule so much, — and yet 
 no one noticed me. I had the awkwardness which I have never lost, and 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 51 
 
 which still troubles me when I am obliged to speak to a stranger or ask the 
 simplest question. I was of a great mind to do my ninety leagues in one 
 stretch, like my uncle JumeHn, and say to my family, ' I've come home and I'm 
 done with painting ' ; but the Louvre had bewitched me. I went back and 
 was consoled. Fra Angelico filled me with visions, and when I returned at 
 night to my miserable lodging, I did not want to think of anything but those 
 gentle masters who made beings so fervent that they are beautiful, and so 
 nobly beautiful that they are good. 
 
 " It has been said that I was very much taken up with the eighteenth 
 century masters, because I made copies of Watteau and Boucher. I have a 
 decided repugnance for Boucher. I saw his knowledge, his talent, but I 
 could not look at his suggestive subjects and sad women without thinking it 
 was all a very poor kind of nature. Boucher did not paint naked women, 
 but little undressed creatures : it was not the luxuriant exhibition of the 
 women of Titian, so proud of their beauty, and so sure of their power, that 
 they show themselves naked. It is not chaste, but it is strong, and great in 
 its femininity. It is art, and good art. But the poor little ladies of Boucher, 
 with their thin legs, their feet deformed by high-heeled slippers, their waists 
 pinched by corsets, their useless hands and bloodless breasts, are all repulsive 
 to me. As I stood before the so much copied ' Diana ' of Boucher, I thought 
 I could see the Marquises of his time, painted by him for no very laudable 
 reason, and whom he had undressed and posed in his studio, which was trans- 
 formed into a landscape. I went back to the 'Diana' of the antique — so 
 beautiful, so noble, and whose forms are all distinguished. Boucher was only 
 a seducer. 
 
 " Nor was Watteau my man. * * * j could see the charm of his 
 palette, and the delicacy of expression of these little stage men condemned to 
 laugh. But I always thought of marionettes, and I said to myself : ' The 
 whole little troupe will be shut up in a box, after the play, to weep over their 
 fate.' I was rather interested in Lesueur, Lebrun, and Jouvenet, because they 
 seemed to me strong. Lesueur had a great effect on me, and I think him 
 one of the great souls of our French school, — as Poussin was the prophet, 
 the sage, and the philosopher, while also the most eloquent teller of a story. 
 I could pass my Hfe face to face with the work of Poussin, and never be tired. 
 
52 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 Well, I lived at the Louvre, at the Spanish Museum, the Standish Museum, 
 and among the drawings, and my attention was always directed to the can- 
 vases where the thought was concisely and strongly expressed. 
 
 " I liked Murillo in his portraits, Ribera in his ' St. Bartholomew' and 
 ' Centaurs.' I hked everything strong, and would have given all Boucher for 
 one of Rubens's nude women. It was only later that I came to know Rem- 
 brandt ; he did not repel me, but he blinded me. I felt that one must ' make 
 the stations ' before entering into the genius of this man. I only knew 
 Velasquez, who is so much sought after nowadays, by his ' Infanta,' in the 
 Louvre. He is certainly a painter '-de race^ and of purest blood, yet his com- 
 positions seem to me empty. 'Apollo and Vulcan' is poor in invention; his 
 ' Winders ' are not winding anything. But the painter remains, and a strong 
 painter. I was never tempted to make a copy of these masters. It seemed 
 to me that a copy was an impossibility, and that it could never have the spon- 
 taneity and fire of the original. One day, however, I spent the whole day in 
 front of the ' Concert Champetre ' of Giorgione. I could not weary of it. It 
 was already three o'clock when, mechanically, I took a little canvas belonging 
 to a friend, and began a sketch of the picture. Four o'clock sounded, and 
 the dreadful ' on ferine ' of the guardians turned me out : but I had made 
 enough of a sketch to give me pleasure, like a run into the country. Giorgione 
 had opened the country to me. I had found consolation with him. Since 
 then I have been too wise to attempt a copy, even of something of my own ; 
 I am incapable of that sort of thing. 
 
 " Except Michael Angelo and Poussin, I have held to my first leaning 
 toward the early masters — subjects as simple as childhood, unconscious expres- 
 sion, creatures that say nothing but are full of life, or who suffer patiently 
 without a moan, without a cfy, submitting to the law of human life without 
 dreaming of calling any one to account for it. They did not make a revolu- 
 tionary art, as in our time. 
 
 " In the end, I had to decide to learn my trade and go into a studio. I 
 did not think anything of the painters who taught. Hersent, Drolling, Leon 
 Cogniet, Abel de Pujol, Picot, all professors who were then sought after, were 
 to me quite indifferent, and also Ingres, none of whose work I had then 
 seen. I waited on and on, reading Vasari in the library of Ste. Genevieve, 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 53 
 
 for fear I should be asked questions about the history of the painters and 
 their hves, and finally decided to see some one who would find me a studio. 
 I had a great dread of this future teacher, and kept putting off the evil 
 moment. One morning I got up, determined to brave the worst. Well, 1 
 was admitted to the studio of Paul Delaroche, the painter whom every one 
 pointed to as the greatest talent of that time. I trembled when I entered. It 
 was a new world to me, but I got used to it, and ended by being not alto- 
 gether unhappy. I found some good souls, a kind of cleverness, and a lan- 
 guage which I had never dreamed of, — it seemed to me a tiresome and 
 incomprehensible jargon. The puns of the Delaroche studio made the boys 
 famous. They talked*'about everything, even politics ; it was rather too much 
 for me to hear them chatter about the ' Phalanstery,' but I took root at last, 
 and my homesickness was a little mitigated." 
 
 Paul Delaroche was the fashionable painter of the day. His 
 atelier wdiS divided into two classes, the *'cast" for beginners and that 
 of the life models. Millet found a group of young men, not unknown 
 later : Couture, Plebert, Cavalier the sculptor, Gendron, Edouard 
 Frere, Yvon, etc., etc. 
 
 In entering this new world. Millet imposed upon himself the 
 strictest silence and circumspection. Like a true peasant, he let others 
 approach him and answered little. They tried to make out this puz- 
 zling countryman. They apostrophized, joked, and teased him, but 
 Millet answered nothing, or, with his fists, threatened those who went 
 too far, and, as he was built like a Hercules, they let him alone, giving 
 him the nickname of the " man of the woods." His first drawing was 
 from the Germanicus. On Monday the drawing was begun; it had to 
 be finished by Saturday. On Thursday, Millet had finished his figure. 
 Delaroche came, looked at the drawing a long time, and said : You 
 are a new-comer. Well, you know too much and not enough." That 
 
54 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 was all he said. Couture, who was in the life class, came in to see 
 the antique class, and said to him : Hello, nouveaiL I Do you know 
 that your drawing is good?" Some time after, he was severely 
 criticised. The originality of his studies, where knowledge was 
 wanting, and where the spirit was everything, surprised the studio, 
 but did not make them understand him. All but one or two pupils 
 considered him as a curious being without a future, an obstinate 
 fellow who took the pose of eccentric drawing, a mutineer in the 
 academic camp, a schismatic in their worship of Delaroche. When 
 he passed into the life school he had the same trial. His first figure, 
 nevertheless, was a success. Delaroche said : It is easy to see that 
 you have painted a great deal." He had, in fact, never touched a 
 palette before. " I only tried," said he, to express as strongly as 
 possible the attachments of the muscles, without occupying myself 
 with the color medium, of which I was entirely ignorant." 
 
 All wished to see the figure, and did not fail to find it inso- 
 lently natural." Boisseau, one of the master's pets, used to say : *'Eh ! 
 Are you coming here to give us some more of your fine figures ? 
 Are you going to make men and women on your own plan ? You 
 know the master doesn't like this Caen cookery." 
 
 What do I care ? " answered Millet. I don't come here to 
 please anybody. I come because there are antiques and models to 
 teach me, that is all. Do I object to your figures, made of butter 
 and honey ?" 
 
 In his heart Millet was struck by the insufficiency of the master, 
 who never gave him serious advice, and who did not even make the 
 impression of a man who knows and can teach. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 55 
 
 Sometimes the truth came out. To a student who did not render 
 the ensemble oi a hfe study, Delaroche said: Look at Millet, — notice 
 how he sees light on a nude figure." 
 
 When Delaroche was painting the Hemicycle," he often talked 
 of it to the students in his atelier. Millet was once much abused by 
 his comrades about a drawing; one of them saying, violently: ''There 
 he is again, drawing from chic'' (out of his head), "and inventing his 
 muscles." Delaroche, coming in at the moment, said : " Gentlemen, 
 the study of nature is indispensable, but you must also know how to 
 work from memory. He is right" (pointing to Millet) *' to use his 
 memory. When I began my ' Hemicycle,' I thought that letting the 
 model stand, I could get the attitude of my personages, but I soon 
 found I would have very good models, with no cohesion among them. 
 I saw that one must invent, create, order, and produce figures appro- 
 priate to each individuality. I had to use my memory. Do as he 
 does, if you can." 
 
 Soon after this, Millet left the atelier. A comrade met him one 
 day, and told him the "patron" wanted to see him about some work 
 on the " Hemicycle." Millet deferred to his orders, and went to the 
 Palace of the Beaux Arts. Delaroche was working in the midst of 
 his aids. He came to Millet and drew him into another room, and 
 rolling two cigarettes, silently offered one to Millet, and then said : 
 ** Wh}' don't you come to the studio any more?" "Because, sir, I 
 can't pay the janitor's tax." "You are wrong. I don't want you to 
 leave the studio ; come back. I have spoken to Poisson" (the janitor), 
 " only don't say anything about it to the others, and do just what you 
 like, — big things, figures, studies, — but don't talk about it to the 
 
56 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET. 
 
 others. I like to see your work ; you are not like other people, and 
 I will tell you what work you can do with me." 
 Millet was touched, and went back. 
 
 At last the moment came for competition for the great " Prix de 
 Rome." Millet was admitted, and worked with talent at the figure. 
 Delaroche was struck with the original view he had taken of the 
 subject. His conscience was moved. He called Millet, and said : 
 
 " You want the ' Prix de Rome ' ?" 
 
 "That is the reason I compete." 
 I find your composition very good, but I must tell you that I 
 especially want Roux appointed ; but next year I will use all my 
 influence for you." 
 
 Edified by this announcement, Millet left the studio, and feeHng 
 that he must rely upon himself alone for instruction and protection, 
 he went to Suisse, who had an academy of models. 
 
IV. 
 
 Millet Begins Life as an Artist — His First and Second Marriages — 
 Settles in Paris — The Revolution of i8/f.8 — Rousseau. 
 
 /^NE student in Delaroche's studio had come near to the man of 
 
 the woods." It was Marolle, son of a varnish manufacturer, 
 whose family could afford to make the art-Hfe he had chosen easy to 
 him. Musset, at that time, was the vadc inecum of all the young 
 people. Marolle knew him by heart, declaimed him, painted him, 
 and even wrote verses, which were not without merit, but which had 
 the fault of being too much like the poetry of the author of " Rolla." 
 *' Musset gives you a fever," said Millet, ''but that is all he knows 
 how to do. A charming mind, capricious, and profoundly poisoned, 
 all he can do is to disenchant, corrupt, or discourage. The fever 
 goes, and one is left without strength, like a convalescent who needs 
 air, sun, and stars." 
 
 It is obvious that Millet was not the ignorant laborer that he was 
 called later. Doubtless he always had the prudence and circumspec- 
 
 8 
 
 57 
 
58 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 tion of the Normandy peasant. Many visitors, thinking they had to 
 do with an ignorant countryman, began talking about a thousand 
 things which Millet considered useless or false, and he would then 
 meet them with the most obstinate silence. The peasant knew more 
 than the citizen. 
 
 MaroUe, discontented, seeking his proper vein, used to say to 
 Millet : You think I am fortunate because I have not got to earn 
 my bread ; but you are the happy one ! you have youthful impres- 
 sions and feelings about nature. I never felt anything but the Fau- 
 bourg Saint Marceau." 
 
 Life became difficult in the little studio. Rue de I'Est. Millet's 
 pension came irregularly, if it came at all, and was quite insufficient. 
 
 " What shall I do ? " said Millet. " People reaping and making 
 hay ? " 
 
 " You can't sell them," said Marolle. 
 Then fauns and forest life ? " 
 Who knows anything about fauns in Paris ? " 
 Well, what then ? " 
 
 They like Boucher, — Watteau, — illustrations, — nude women. 
 You must do things in that style ! " 
 
 Millet at last decided to submit to the necessities of life. He did 
 not wish to let his family know of his wants by applying to them. 
 But he made a last effort — a little picture representing Charity, — a 
 melancholy figure with three nurslings. He took his picture him- 
 self from shop to shop, and could not get the smallest offer for it 
 He came home sadly, and said to his friend : 
 
 "You are right ; give me subjects and I will paint them." 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 59 
 
 It was at this time that he made a number of pastels, imitations 
 of Boucher and Watteau, which Marolle baptized after his own fashion, 
 with names of that time — Vert- Vert," **The Old Man's Calendar," 
 " Soldier Proposing to a Nurse," ''The Reading of the Novel," *' The 
 Late Watch," ''A Day at Trianon." Sometimes the artist went back 
 to the Bible, and painted ''Jacob and Laban," "Ruth and Boaz." 
 Marolle and Millet took these pictures to the dealers, who were very 
 disdainful, and would only accept them "on sale." The highest price 
 he could get was never more than twenty francs, and when they came 
 to that sum Millet thought he had reached fortune, and the happy day 
 in which he could give himself up to the impressions which his native 
 country had made on him. He painted, also, unsigned portraits for 
 five and ten francs. But he did not neglect his studies. In spite of 
 his struggle against poverty, he worked in the evening at Suisse's and 
 Boudin's. He went to the library of Ste. Genevieve, and examined 
 the works of the most celebrated exponents of form, Albert Diirer, 
 Leonardo da Vinci, Jean Cousin, and Nicolas Poussin, for whom he 
 had the deepest and most lasting admiration. Especially he studied 
 Michael Angelo : read all the biographies, communications, corre- 
 spondence, and documents concerning this great man, whom he never 
 ceased to consider the highest expression of art. 
 
 In these researches. Millet liked to be accompanied by Marolle. 
 Either because he was afraid of learned men, or feared to commit 
 some blunder, he made his friend do the talking. Marolle was a link 
 between Millet and the outer world, which always filled him with a 
 sort of horror, and this function Marolle performed with zeal. The 
 biographers of Millet owe a debt of gratitude to the good comrade, 
 
6o JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 without whom the great painter would perhaps have succumbed 
 under the difficult trials of his novitiate. 
 
 It was in 1840 that Millet first tried to exhibit at the Salon of 
 the Louvre. The constitution of the jury made it a formidable trial. 
 The jury was not, as now, an assembly of peers elected by universal 
 suffrage each year. It was the Institute, with its doctrines and antip- 
 athies. It acted only according to its own good pleasure. The new 
 school was, with a few exceptions, systematically snubbed. Theodore 
 Rousseau gave up facing the yearly humiliations to which he was sub- 
 jected. Eugene Delacroix was more fortunate, — only half his pictures 
 were refused. Decamps, whose works were so curiously elaborated, 
 felt the capricious rigor of the authorities. Jules Dupre would not 
 exhibit. Corot, still full of respect for the traditions of Bertin and the 
 judgments of the Academy, advanced step by step toward his beauti- 
 ful echoes of Claude Lorraine. In spite of his prudence, he was kept 
 away from the Salon with the rest. Diaz was despised, but he entered 
 almost forcibly, thanks to his Correggio studies. Millet dared to 
 beard the lion, and sent two portraits, MaroUe's and a relation's, M. 
 L. F. The latter only was admitted, and passed unnoticed. Millet 
 told us afterward that it was the poorer of the two ; the color was 
 somber and looked like the follies of the Delaroche studio. 
 
 When the Exhibition closed he went back to see his Normandy, 
 with the desire to stay and try to get a living at Cherbourg, and be 
 near his family. It was not the first time that he returned. Almost 
 every year he went to breathe his native air and stay some weeks in 
 Gruchy, with his mother and grandmother, who already thought him 
 a wonder, as the Cherbourg papers had spoken of him. In 1838 and 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 6l 
 
 1840 he made several portraits of his family and friends — his mother 
 and grandmother, who were living with one of his brothers. He 
 made two portraits of his grandmother, one a drawing, life size, 
 characterized by a strong expression of austerity. Millet worked on 
 it with great care, as a labor of love. He wanted, he said, to show 
 the soul of his grandmother. 
 
 As his pictures did not sell, he accepted commissions for signs, 
 and painted them the size of life : The Little Milk-girl," for a dry- 
 goods shop ; " A Scene of Our African Campaigns," for a tumbler, 
 who paid him the price (thirty francs) in sous ; a horse, for a veter- 
 inary surgeon ; a sailor, for a sail-maker. 
 
 Having failed to satisfy the municipality with the portrait of a 
 deceased local dignitary (though they accepted and hung the picture, 
 when he, to cut matters short, gave it to them), Millet was completely 
 cast off by the influential people, who were ashamed of having pro- 
 tected a sign-painter; but such injustice raised friends for him. All 
 the young people were on his side. Indifferent to public opinion, he 
 nevertheless became an object of attention to all who liked noise or 
 opposition ; he received some orders for portraits. 
 
 Millet was a big, handsome fellow, proud, with gentle eyes. A 
 nice Cherbourg girl, whose portrait he was painting, took compassion 
 on him. Millet married her in 1 841, and began to paint portraits of his 
 wife, himself, and several members of his new family, whom he always 
 disliked to speak of His marriage was not happy. His wife was very 
 delicate; she suffered and faded away, dying in Paris in 1844, after 
 two years and five months of marriage. Millet returned to Paris in 
 1842. A portrait and picture sent to the Salon were both refused. 
 
62 JEAN-FRANgorS MILLET, 
 
 From 1 841 to 185 i, Millet's talent changed and assumed a dis- 
 tinct individuality. The blackness and thick shadows of his figures 
 disappeared, and all the traditions of the Delaroche studio. He 
 painted with fervor, with the joy of a man who feels full of life and 
 gifts, and who understands the secrets of the masters. He knows as 
 much as the artists of the eighteenth century, and seems sometimes 
 to remember Restout and Vanloo, and the methods which the old 
 painters of Cherbourg had preserved. But he finds his hand is too 
 clever, and does not follow his mind. Then he stops, studies Michael 
 Angelo and analyzes Correggio. He goes to the Louvre, does not 
 copy, but lives in the atmosphere of the masters. He questions 
 them, tries to understand them. Modeling (which is the sculptural 
 presentation of form bathed in air) engrosses him ; it is the first phase 
 of his transformation. He studies it in Correggio, the magician of 
 flesh, the painter of natural grace and strong life. 
 
 In 1843 he exhibited nothing. In 1844 he sent two subjects, one 
 *'The Riding Lesson," a group of children playing horse — one 
 mounted on the back of another. " At last," said Diaz, here is a 
 new man, who has the knowledge which I would like to have, and 
 movement, color, expression, too, — here is a painter ! " 
 
 Millet's life now became still harder, complicated by the sufferings 
 of a dying woman. He was without money, position, or connections. 
 He never spoke of this time without a sort of terror. His material life 
 was a daily fight. He was ready to do anything that chance offered, 
 — had endless difficulties to get the most trifling sums paid. He met 
 people who took advantage of his poverty, who wearied him with 
 their refusals, and went to all lengths of cruelty. A different man 
 
Portrait of Madame Millet. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 65 
 
 would have vowed vengeance on this inhuman society — this savage 
 Paris ; but Millet did not bear any malice. He merely told the fact, 
 and added : Yes, there are bad people, but there are good ones also, 
 and one good one consoles you for many bad, I sometimes found 
 helping hands, and I don't complain." 
 
 In 1844 he left his own country, to which he returned when he 
 was too hard pressed by trouble. He went to Cherbourg, where he 
 was well received. It must be admitted that his talent had acquired 
 a more appreciable form, his drawing had a persuasive charm, though 
 a little affected. Color was his strongest point ; atmospheric har- 
 mony, richness of tone, and a peculiar use of rosy gray, gave an 
 attractive warmth to his Vv^orks. He executed with a rapidity 
 which might be now called rather too easy, but there was so much 
 exuberance of strength, such a passion for covering canvas, that the 
 pleasure of painting overcame colder reason. Afterward he quieted 
 his youthful fire, put on the bit of the most precise drawing ; 
 but in those days he was given over to the " Muse of Painting," 
 and threw the reins to his passionate nature. Those who like 
 to divide a painter's career into periods may call this the " florid 
 manner " of Millet, for his painting has all the charm and promise 
 of youth. 
 
 This manner is most clearly characterized in the portrait of 
 Mile. Antoinette Feuardent, 1841. The general harmony is brill- 
 iant, even luminous, though it does not reach the fine tone of 
 nature which he afterward possessed. Still you feel that here is 
 a true painter. It is a child of six, bare-footed, on her knees in 
 front of a looking-glass, looking at herself and laughing. She 
 
 9 
 
66 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 has a pink silk handkerchief on her head, and leans both hands 
 on the frame of the glass. It is painted on a red preparation, and 
 is full of brio. 
 
 His first marriage had been unfortunate, but he was not a man 
 who could live alone ; a young girl loved him in silence ; he finally 
 discovered this, and married the woman who became the mother of 
 his children and the devoted companion of his whole life. They left 
 for Paris in November, 1845, ^^^^ they stopped at Havre, where 
 several friends expected them. He did all sorts of things — portraits 
 of captains, ship-owners, commanders, and people employed in the 
 port, even sailors. He painted, among other things, a senora in blue 
 and pink, languidly stretched on a divan, a commission given him 
 very specially by a sea-captain. For a moment he became really 
 popular. M. Vanner had a portrait the size of life, others followed 
 suit. These portraits all have a brilliant side, but are too hastily 
 executed. Genre pictures and pastels also belong to this time. 
 Widows, " Child bird-nesting," " Old woman coming home with 
 Fagots," "A sewing- woman asleep," "Gypsies," "Temptation of St. 
 Anthony," reapers, fishermen, etc., also a charming " Daphnis and 
 Chloe," full of youth, freshness, and naivete. Already Millet knew 
 how to give each age its form, and, as it were, its moral expression. 
 Another picture is an "Offering to Pan." A girl, a sort of fawn- 
 like creature, is crowning a statue of Pan. The girl's form is modeled 
 in a masterly way. "The flute-lesson," "Youth giving a Girl to 
 drink near a Statue of Bacchus," "Two lovers," "A Girl brushing 
 away the Flies from her sleeping Lover," " Sacrifice to Priapus," 
 "A drunken Bacchante upheld by two young Bacchants," etc., all 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 6/ 
 
 executed in a few strokes, and half defiantly. At Havre a public 
 exhibition of his works was organized, and he made a few more 
 portraits. When, at last; not without difficulty, he got nine hundred 
 francs together, he left for Paris with his wife. 
 
 Here ends the happy life of Millet. Paris, somber and stubborn, 
 will dispute and fight him. Becoming soon a father, his duty will be 
 to his family, black bread and anxiety will be his portion, — he will 
 never see again either his mother or grandmother. Paris will be a 
 prison to him, and will not even let him go to bid farewell to his old 
 nurses. He will write often to the inhabitants of his native town, the 
 answers will be always touchingly full of tenderness and resignation, 
 but he will always look upon himself as a captive. " I felt," said 
 Millet, " that I was nailed to a rock and condemned to endless 
 labor ; but I could have forgotten all if I had only been able once in 
 a while to see again my native place." 
 
 Millet and his wife came to Paris in December, 1845, and for a 
 time lived in a modest lodging in Rue Rochechouart, while waiting 
 to go into three mansard rooms in the same street, No. 42 bis, where 
 Millet had arranged a very informal studio, whose whole furniture 
 consisted of three chairs and an easel. Above him was the studio 
 of the pupils of Toussaint, the sculptor, and all around an open 
 space where, in the evening, a whole colony of artists, workmen, 
 young fellows, poured out to breathe the fresh air, tell stories, and 
 discuss. Opposite lived Joseph Guichard ; Charles Jacque, the 
 clever etcher, lived a little beyond ; other neighbors were Sechan 
 and Dieterle, clever scene-painters : P^ugene Lacoste, and Azevedo, 
 the musical critic. 
 
68 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 At once he began to work. His " St. Jerome Tempted by 
 Women" was fine in effect and in movement; it was superbly 
 painted. Couture sent artists to see this " astonishing piece." While 
 he was painting it, he received a letter from his grandmother : 
 
 " You say you are painting a portrait of St. Jerome, groaning under the 
 temptations which besieged his youth Ah, dear child, like him reflect, and 
 gain the same holy profit. Follow the example of a man of your own pro- 
 fession, and say, ' I paint for eternity.' For no reason in the world allow 
 yourself to do wrong. Do not fall in the eyes of God. With St. Jerome, 
 think ever of the trumpet which will call us to the Judgment Seat. * # * 
 Thy mother is ill, and part of the time in bed. I get more and more helpless, 
 and can hardly walk. We wish you a happy and fortunate new year, full of 
 the most abundant blessings of heaven. Let us soon hear from you. We are 
 very anxious to know how you are getting on. We hope well, and embrace 
 you with sincere friendship. 
 
 " Thy grandmother, 
 
 " Louise Jumelin. 
 
 " Greville, June loth, 1846." 
 
 At the Salon of 1846, the jury refused the St. Jerome, and Millet, 
 being short of canvas, painted over it CEdipus being taken from the 
 Tree." Tourneux (a fellow-student of the Beaux Arts) had lost no 
 time in discovering Millet. They became intimate, and from that 
 time on. Millet was counted among the family of painters of ''The 
 Quarter." Diaz lived near, and came to see him. He was not a cold 
 admirer. The talent of Millet, like that of Rousseau, had the gift of 
 exciting and making him eloquent. He made a tremendous propa- 
 ganda for Millet, urging amateurs and dealers to get this artist's 
 paintings, if they did not wish to stand in his eyes as blind 
 and incapable. 
 
CEdipus being taken from the Tree. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 71 
 
 At this time he painted some charming pastels for Schroth, 
 Durand-Ruel, and Deforges ; also, for M. Duglere and Baroilhet, 
 lovely paintings of naked, innocent women and children. He painted 
 also, ''The Age of Gold " (1846) ; Young Girl in a Wood " ; Man 
 with a Wheelbarrow full of Grass " ; "A Girl with a Lamb " (an often 
 repeated subject); Bathers," in a sylvan landscape; ''Woman seen 
 from behind lying on a Bed"; another nude woman asleep — a fawn 
 looks at her through the foliage (owned by Diaz) ; " Group of 
 Youths and Maidens resting under the Trees" — happy creatures in 
 a primitive paradise. Up to 1847, Millet painted exterior life in its 
 most unconscious conditions. He did not paint the soul, with its 
 sufferings, as later, but living forms. The artists called him a master 
 of the nude. 
 
 For the Salon of 1847, he made a picture whose name is the only 
 classic thing about it — the " QEdipus being taken from the Tree." It 
 was painted to show his power in the nude. Every one urged him 
 in this direction, where he made such successes, and in which his 
 natural temperament kept him so many years. You feel that the 
 CEdipus is a fine piece of work, and that the artist, a consummate 
 workman, has only thought of the execution. Millet himself said : "It 
 is a pretext to exercise myself in the nude and in the modeling 
 of light." In truth, the CEdipus is nothing more. Millet makes his 
 mark, but as yet he is neither poet nor thinker. What is most 
 remarkable in this picture, and in many others of the same time, 
 is the ease with which Millet makes real nature with what is not pure 
 reality. He is not a copyist. He uses reaHty, but transforms it. In 
 his nude figures, his most amorous subjects, you never find an 
 
72 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 unwholesome intention. The picture of the " Children with the 
 Wheelbarrow " seems a robust echo of Fragonard ; a young peasant 
 such as never existed, shoulders and breast bare, hair flying, and 
 a face bright with the sun of May. In the hands of a painter of the 
 eighteenth century it would be a suggestive study. With Millet it is 
 only fine plastic art, touched by spring-time and youth. So with 
 all his nude paintings. Millet had a sensuous organization and 
 delighted in flesh ; but he had an honest soul. In the midst of all our 
 decadence he kept a pure heart. 
 
 It was in 1847 that I saw him first. I went with Troyon to his 
 lodging in the Rue Rochechouart. He wore a strange garb, which 
 gave his whole person an outlandish look. A brown-stone-colored 
 overcoat, a thick beard, and long hair covered with a woolen cap like 
 those worn by coachmen, gave his face a character which made one 
 think of the painters of the Middle Ages. His reception was kind, 
 but almost silent. On finding that I had been brought up in the 
 country, and liked his painting, he began to be more expansive. 
 "Every subject is good," said he, "only it must be rendered with 
 strength and clearness. In art, there must be a governing thought 
 expressed eloquently. We must have it in ourselves, and stamp it 
 upon others, just as a medal is stamped. Art is not a pleasure-trip ; 
 it is a fight, — a mill that grinds. I am not a philosopher. I don't 
 want to stop pain, or find a formula which will make me indifferent 
 or a stoic. Pain is, perhaps, that which makes the artist express 
 himself most distinctly." He talked for some time, and then was 
 silent, made timid by his own words. When we parted, we felt that 
 we had m.ade the beginning of a serious friendship. I came again 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 73 
 
 and saw Millet in his home, beside his wife, who hid with dignity 
 the poverty of the household, — he rocking his little children, then 
 slowly returning to his work with the deliberation of one of the 
 oxen of his own country. Especially I loved to see him, brush 
 in hand, executing with marvelous dexterity lovely little compo- 
 sitions which he finished at a sitting with all the magic of his 
 chiaroscuro, and with that sensitive touch which is characteristic of 
 his lightest work. 
 
 MiUet at this time knew Charles Jacque. He was a man of 
 penetration and enthusiasm. Millet's painting had attracted him ; 
 the man had charmed him. He had become a passionate admirer of 
 his talent, and he knew how to express his admiration in just and 
 convincing terms. Jacque was then making his charming etchings, 
 like those of a pupil of Ostade. At dusk we met at Millet's, and 
 there Jacque, Campredon, and others now gone, passed hours before 
 a jug of beer, talking of the ancients and moderns. In these inter- 
 minable conversations Millet put in a good word, or, now and then, 
 a powerful argument. He was very severe upon the romanticists, 
 dogmatists, and politicians, as well as upon contemporary art. You 
 could see that the air of Paris weighed heavily upon him, and that the 
 chatter of the great city, its literature, its aims and ambitions, its 
 manners and customs, were a world which he could not understand. 
 
 In the spring. Millet was taken with a dangerous rheumatic 
 fever, and brought to death's door. He had neither linen nor 
 resources. Sechan, Dieterle, and others came to his rescue with 
 necessaries, not without difficulty. He was given up by all but his 
 devoted friends, and when he did begin slowly to recover he could 
 lO 
 
74 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 scarcely speak or breathe. But youth has its privileges ; it forgets 
 quickly, and renews itself with its own vital powers. One morning 
 Millet shook himself 'Mike a wet dog," and began to work with a 
 trembling hand. But the Salon of 1848 was to open. Millet finished 
 a "Winnower" and a Captivity of the Jews in Babylon," and sent 
 them. The jury had been abohshed, and everything sent was hung, 
 — the Winnower" in the salon caj've and the *'Jews" in the- 
 long gallery. The first obtained a real success, the second left the 
 public cold. 
 
 But this success did not fill the needy purse of the Millets. The 
 Revolution had stopped all picture-buying, and artists suffered the 
 extremest famine. Millet and his wife did not complain ; they asked 
 nothing, but we knew their distress. One of us went to the museum, 
 then to the Direction of the Beaux Arts, and got a hundred francs, 
 which we took immediately to the painter. It was at twilight ; Millet 
 was in his studio, sitting on a box, his back bent like a man who is 
 chilled. He said Good-day," but did not move. It was freezing 
 cold in the miserable room. When the money was handed him, he 
 said : Thank you ; it comes in time. We have not eaten for two 
 days, but the important thing is that the children have not suffered. 
 Until to-day they have had food." He called his wife, saying, ''I am 
 going to get wood ; I am very cold." He did not say another word, 
 and never spoke of it again. A few days after, he moved to the Rue 
 du Delta, In April, M. Ledru-Rollin, urged by Jeanron, came to see 
 him, and gave him a commission of eighteen hundred francs. M. 
 Ledru-Rollin bought also the Winnower," for five hundred francs; 
 this was a great deal in 1848. 
 
Portrait of Millet (1847). 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 77 
 
 Then came the insurrection of June. Millet, again overtaken 
 by poverty, was painting a midwife's sign when the first guns were 
 fired. The midwife carried off her sign, and left the artist thirty 
 francs as pay. 
 
 " It saved us," said Millet, " for we managed to live two weeks 
 on the money, until the insurrection and the troubles which followed 
 it were quieted. How often I have blessed this unexpected help !" 
 
 A few days after, he painted a Samson, asleep beside Delilah, 
 who is about to cut his hair. It is a little picture, of a finely balanced 
 composition and beautiful color. He also painted a " Mercury 
 carrying ofi" the flocks of Argus." But these pictures did not sell. 
 A cover for a song was ordered ; Millet made the drawing, and 
 sent the lithographic stone to the publisher. The price was thirty 
 francs : he was paid by insolence ; the door was shut in his face. 
 
 He then drew two " Liberties," but they sold no better than the 
 others. Jacque advised him to make drawings in exchange for 
 clothes, — six drawings went for a pair of shoes, a picture for a bed. 
 Portraits of Diaz, Barye, Victor Dupre, Vechte, half-length and hfe- 
 size, were bought for twenty francs, all four, and charming sketches 
 were sold from one franc to five. Charles Jacque collected a 
 quantity of papers on the studio floor — drawings and notes from 
 nature ; he bought them, and saved them from being used for 
 the fire. 
 
 Like every other Parisian, Millet was armed with a gun during 
 the Revolution, and had to take his place in the defense of the 
 Assembly and the taking of the barricades of the Rochechouart 
 quarter, where he saw the chief of the insurgents fall. He came back 
 
78 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 angry and indignant at the slaughters of Paris. He had no mihtary 
 spirit, nor the rage of revolt, and all he saw made his heart bleed. 
 
 We used to go together of an evening to the plain of Montmartre 
 or St. Ouen. The next day I would find impressions of the day 
 before, which he had painted in a few hours. His facihty was extra- 
 ordinary, and he never omitted the telling note or charm of color. 
 
 He greatly desired an order from the Administration of Fine 
 Arts, and, with this in view, began a fine painting of Hagar and 
 Ishmael," — almost nude figures, under a burning light. But he 
 suddenly stopped, and painted on the same canvas " Haymakers 
 resting beside a Hay-cock." This is what caused this sudden change: 
 One evening, standing before Deforges' window, he saw two young 
 men examining one of his pictures, "Women Bathing." Do you 
 know who painted that?" said one. "Yes," replied the other, "a 
 fellow called Millet, who paints only naked women." These words 
 cut him to the quick, — his dignity was touched. Coming home, he 
 told his wife the story. " If you consent," said he, " I will do no 
 more of that sort of pictures. Living will be harder than ever, and 
 you will suffer, but I will be free to do what I have long been 
 thinking of" Mme. Millet answered, "I am ready. Do as you will." 
 And from that time on. Millet, relieved in a sense from all servitude, 
 entered resolutely into rustic art. 
 
 The year 1849 was a difficult time for many painters. Millet, 
 whom fortune was slow to smile upon, was not more happy than his 
 friends ; yet he found time and strength to paint a peasant-woman 
 seated, which he sent to the Salon, — but in this epoch of political 
 excitement it does not seem to have caused any great interest. 
 
I 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 8l 
 
 Material life was a problem to be solved every day. He had no other 
 hope than an order from the Minister, and it was a long, difficult piece 
 of work. The figures in "The Hay-makers " were to be half life-size, 
 in the middle of a plain, at rest near a hay-cock. Millet sought long 
 on the banks of the Seine and at St. Ouen, but could find nothing 
 that he could use. He said, " I don't see anything but inhabitants 
 of a suburb ; I want a country-woman." However, he finished his 
 work, and had just received the price, when the Revolution of the 
 13th June, 1849, broke out. The cholera, too, reached its height, 
 and decided Millet and Jacque to leave the city. Furnished with 
 eighteen hundred francs, they went with their families to Barbizon, 
 and stopped at old Ganne's. There had already settled, since 
 June, 1844, Theodore Rousseau, Hughes Martin, Belly, Louis Leroy, 
 and Clerget. 
 
 It was at this time that Millet and Rousseau first knew each 
 other ; they had merely met at Diaz's. They were neither of them 
 men to enter easily into an intimacy ; they took several months 
 to examine one another, and it was not till long after that they 
 talked without constraint. Millet, prudent and discreet, always kept 
 a reserve with Rousseau, which the latter appreciated later. He 
 was never a pupil of Rousseau, as has been stated. When they met 
 they were of equal force : if, afterward, one showed the influence of 
 the other, it was Rousseau, who was drawn by Millet's art toward 
 simplicity of subject and sobriety of Hne. 
 
 Millet and Jacque hired studios- — such studios! — in peasant's 
 houses, and set out together to discover the country. I often visited 
 them at this time. They were in such a state of excitement that they 
 
 1 1 
 
82 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET. 
 
 could not paint. The majesty of the old woods, the virginity of the 
 rocks and underbrush, the broken bowlders and green pastures, 
 intoxicated them with beauty and odors. They could not think of 
 leaving such enchantment. Millet found his dream lying before him. 
 He touched his own sphere ; he felt the blood of his family in his 
 veins ; he became again a peasant. 
 
 The following is from his first letter from Barbizon, June 28th, 
 1849: 
 
 " We have determined, Jacque and I, to stay here some time, and we 
 have each taken a house. The prices are very different from those in Paris, 
 and as one can get there easily if necessary, and the country is superb, we 
 will work more quietly than in Paris, and, perhaps, do better things. In fact, 
 we want to stay here some time." 
 
 Noon. 
 
V. 
 
 Millet at Barbizon-—'' The Sower'' — Deaths of his 
 Grandmother and Mother. 
 
 THE "some time" which he was to stay at Barbizon was twenty- 
 seven years, — all the rest of his life. 
 
 From the time Millet went to Barbizon he became "the rustic," 
 and gave to his pictures an elevation, a largeness, which have made 
 him unique in our art, — one who speaks a language hitherto unheard. 
 The echo of country life, its eclogues, its hard work, its anxiety, 
 its misery, its peace, the emotions of the man bound to the soil, — all 
 these he will know how to translate, and the inhabitant of the city 
 will see that "the trivial can be made to serve the sublime," and that 
 something noble can be evolved from the commonest acts of life. 
 
 His first fever quieted, Millet painted the rustic scenes which 
 struck him — sawyers at work at gigantic trees, wood-gatherers, 
 charcoal-burners, quarrymen worn out with their frightful toil, 
 poachers on the scent, stone-breakers, road-laborers, men plowing, 
 harrowing, and wood-cutting. Each one of these scenes he finished 
 
 83 
 
84 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 in a day, sometimes in a couple of hours. Later, he composed and 
 executed with great care a series of httle drawings which were to 
 express the whole life of the peasant: first, the man of the soil, in his 
 blouse and sabots, — the hero of work, the central point; then, the 
 peasant woman, young, strong, and handsome ; then, a series of 
 country scenes, from the mother playing with her child to the poor 
 old woman who goes to cut the dead wood, and brings home on her 
 wretched back a fagot four times as big as herself This collection is 
 the revelation of an artist of genius. It is a succession of pictures 
 worthy to be placed beside the philosophic compositions of Holbein. 
 
 He had taken a little peasant's house with three narrow, low 
 rooms, which served as studio, kitchen, and bed-room for his wife and 
 his three children. Later, when the children increased to nine, the 
 little house was lengthened by two other rooms. A studio was built 
 at the end of the garden, and Millet added a wash-house and a 
 chicken-yard in the middle of a garden which was leased to him. 
 He had two occupations : in the morning he dug or planted, 
 sowed or reaped ; after lunch he went into the low, cold, dark room 
 called a studio. He did not dislike this shadowy nook, for there a 
 great part of his works were composed, and all his poetic composi- 
 tions, sketches, and drawings. His first vision was a Bible subject, 
 Ruth and Boaz," which he drew on the wall in crayon. They 
 were real peasants, — a harvest scene where the master, as in the 
 Scripture, finds a young gleaner, and leads her blushing to the feast 
 of the country people. 
 
 When he had been too long in his dark studio he felt a pain, 
 which soon became a headache of the most violent kind. He was 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 87 
 
 days and sometimes even weeks under the iron hand of this enemy. 
 To ward off the beginnings of the evil, he would go away into the 
 fields and forest, and walk about with feverish anxiety. We often 
 followed him, with other friends, in his coursing over hill and dale. 
 The open air restored him ; then, with a child-like joy, he would 
 climb rocks, jumping, like a stag, to reach at a bound the highest 
 point of the curious granite bowlders which give a magic appearance 
 to the forest of Fontainebleau. Sabots on his feet, and wearing an old 
 red sailor's-jacket, and a weather-beaten straw-hat, he was in his 
 element. When tired and overcome by the climb, he threw himself 
 on the ground and cried out, like Goethe: " My God, how good it 
 is under Thy heaven ! " And added : " I don't know anything 
 more delicious than to lie on the heather and look up at the sky." 
 He writes from Barbizon : 
 
 " My Dear Sensier work like a gang of slaves ; the day 
 
 seems five months long. My wish to make a winter landscape has become a 
 fixed idea. I want to do a sheep picture, — and have all sorts of projects in 
 my head. If you could see how beautiful the forest is ! I rush there at the 
 end of the day, after my work, and I come back every time crushed. It is so 
 calm, such a terrible grandeur, that I find myself really frightened. I don't 
 know what those fellows, the trees, are saying to each other ; they say some- 
 thing which we can not understand, because we don't know their language, 
 that is all. But I'm sure they don't make pujis. 
 
 " To-morrow, Sunday, is the fete of Barbizon. Every oven, stove, chim- 
 ney, saucepan, and pot is in such activity that you might believe it was the 
 day before the '-noces de GamacJie.' Every old triangle is used as a spit, and 
 all the turkeys, geese, hens, and ducks which you saw in such good health are 
 at this minute roasting and boiling, — and pies as big as wagon- wheels ! Bar- 
 bizon is one big kitchen, and the fumes must be smelt for miles. * * * 
 Pray give the following order to the frame-maker. * * * Try to have him 
 
88 
 
 JEAN-FRAN(,:OIS MILLET, 
 
 make the frames in not too frightfully bad taste. If the gilding should not be 
 so fine, never mind ; the form is the point. Send, also, 3 burnt sienna, 2 raw 
 ditto, 3 Naples yellow, i burnt Italian earth, 2 yellow ocher, 2 burnt umber, 
 I bottle of raw oil. * * * " 
 
 It was with the simplest means that he obtained the exquisite 
 tones and transparent effects of his pictures. 
 
 While patiently studying the action of his reapers, Millet 
 produced a figure which had long occupied his thoughts. We know 
 what a serious affair the sowing is to an agricultural people. 
 Plowing, manuring, and harrowing are done with comparative indif- 
 ference, at any rate without heroic passion ; but when a man puts on 
 the white grain-bag, rolls it around his left arm, fills it with seed, 
 the hope of the coming year, that man exercises a sort of sacred 
 ministry. He says nothing, looks straight before him, measures 
 the furrow, and, with a movement cadenced like the rhythm of a 
 mysterious song, throws the grain, which falls to the earth and will 
 soon be covered by the harrow. The rhythmic walk of the sower and 
 his action are superb. The importance of the deed is real, and 
 he feels his responsibility. If he is a good laborer, he will know how 
 much seed to throw with every fling of his hand, adjusting the 
 amount sown to the nature of the soil. I have seen sowers who, 
 before they put foot upon the field, would toss a handful of grain into 
 the air in the sign of a cross ; then, stepping upon the field, they 
 would pronounce, in a low voice, some indistinct words which 
 sounded like a prayer. 
 
 Millet had the idea of the sower in his heart without knowing 
 how to define it. Barbizon formulated the work for him, but the 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 89 
 
 scene is laid in Gruchy. Although The Sower " was conceived and 
 executed at Barbizon, it was with the remembrance of Normandy. 
 In point of fact, the first " Sower " by Millet was a young fellow 
 of a wild aspect, dressed in a red shirt and blue breeches, his legs 
 wrapped in wisps of straw, and his hat torn by the weather. It 
 is not at all a man of Barbizon — it is a young fellow of Greville, 
 who, with a proud and serious step, finishes his task on the steep 
 fields, in the midst of a flock of crows, which fly down upon the grain. 
 It is himself, Millet, who remembers his early life, and finds himself 
 once more upon his native soil. . Later, he made several drawings and 
 pastels of a " Sower," all having the look of the people at Barbizon. 
 The action is less dignified, the man is more weighed down, like the 
 people about Paris ; and in order that there should be no mistake, 
 Millet made as a frame about him the portrait of the country — the 
 old tower and plain of Chailly. 
 
 The first Sower"* (1850) was executed with fury, but having 
 reached the end of his work, Millet found, like Michael Angelo with 
 his statues, that the stuff was insufficient, the canvas was too short. 
 He traced the lines of his figure exactly, and produced the twin 
 brother, which appeared in the exhibition that opened at the end 
 of the year 1850.! The Salon was then at the Palais Royal. 
 With The Sower" Millet sent The Sheaf-binders." The Sower" 
 made some noise; the young school talked about it, copied it, repro- 
 duced it in lithography, and it has remained in the memory of artists 
 
 * [The first " Sower " is owned by Quincy A. Shaw, Esq., of Boston, who has also a 
 number of other works by Millet. — Trans.] 
 
 t See Frontispiece. 
 
 12 
 
go 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 as Millet's chef-d' mvre. Theophile Gautier was touched by it. In 
 the following quotation we see the impression made by this virile 
 work : 
 
 " ' The Sower,' by M. J.-F. Millet, impresses us as the first pages of the 
 ' Mare au Diable ' of Georges Sand, which are about labor and rustic toil. 
 The night is coming, spreading its gray wings over the earth ; the sower 
 marches with a rhythmic step, flinging the grain in the furrow ; he is followed 
 by a cloud of pecking birds; he is covered with dark rags, his head by a 
 curious cap. He is bony, swart, and meager, under this livery of poverty, yet 
 it is life which his large hand sheds; he who has nothing pours upon the 
 earth, with a superb gesture, the bread of the future. On the other side of 
 the slope, a last ray of the sun shows a pair of oxen at the end of their furrow, 
 strong and gentle companions of man, whose recompense will one day be the 
 slaughter-house. This is the only light of the picture, which is bathed in 
 shadow, and presents to the eye, under a cloudy sky, nothing but newly 
 plowed earth. Of all the peasants sent to the Salon this year, we much 
 prefer ' The Sower.' There is something great and of the grand style in this 
 figure, with its violent gesture, its proud raggedness, which seems to be painted 
 with the very earth that the sower is planting." 
 
 He was often obliged to go to Paris to sell his little canvases, 
 and he would finish them sometimes in the studio of Diaz or at E. 
 Lavieille's. Peasants going to Work" was one of the most beautiful 
 of these ; it was bought by M. Collot, who ordered a Virgin for a 
 sign-board for his shop. The latter was for many years on the 
 corner of the Rue N6tre-Dame-de-Lorette and the Rue Saint- 
 Lazare, and was often repainted. It now belongs to M. Morel, who 
 has had it cleaned. 
 
 It was at this time that Millet confided to me his divorce from 
 mythology and naked female figures. He wrote from Barbizon : 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 93 
 
 " I received yesterday colors, oil, canvas, and the sketch. These are the 
 names of the pictures for the sale in question : 
 " I. Woman pounding hemp. 
 
 " 2. Peasant man and woman going to work in the field. 
 " 3. Pickers of wood in the forest. 
 
 " I don't know whether pickers can be printed. ' Peasant man and 
 woman gathering Wood,' or anything you choose. * * * g^it, to tell the 
 truth, the peasant subjects suit my temperament best ; for I must confess, even 
 if you think me a socialist, that the human side of art is what touches me 
 most, and if I could only do what I like, — or, at least, attempt it, — I should 
 do nothing that was not an impression from nature, either in landscape or 
 figures. The gay side never shows itself to me. I don't know where it is. I 
 have never seen it. The gayest thing I know is the calm, the silence, which 
 is so sweet, either in the forest or in the cultivated land — whether the land 
 be good for culture or not. You will admit that it is always very dreamy, 
 and a sad dream, though often very delicious. 
 
 " You are sitting under a tree, enjoying all the comfort and quiet of 
 which you are capable ; you see come from a narrow path a poor creature 
 loaded with fagots. The unexpected and always surprising way in which 
 this figure strikes you, instantly reminds you of the common and melancholy 
 lot of humanity — weariness. It is always like the impression of La Fontaine's 
 ' Wood-cutter,' in the fable : 
 
 " ' What pleasure has he had since the day of his birth ? 
 Who so poor as he in the whole wide earth ? ' 
 
 " Sometimes, in places where the land is sterile, you see figures hoeing 
 and digging. From time to time one raises himself and straightens his back, 
 as they call it, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. ' Thou shalt 
 eat thy bread in the sweat of thy brow.' Is this the gay, jovial work some 
 people would have us believe in ? But, nevertheless, to me it is true 
 humanity and great poetry ! 
 
 " But I stop, lest I should end by tiring you. Forgive me ; I am all 
 alone, with no one to whom I can speak of my impressions, and I let myself 
 go without thinking. I will not do so again. Oh, now I think of it, send me 
 
94 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 from time to time some fine letters with the Minister's seal, — a red seal and all 
 the prettiness possible. If you could only see the respect with which the 
 postman gives them to me, hat in hand (a thing quite out of the common), 
 saying, with the greatest unctuousness, 'From the Minister!' It gives me a 
 position, it increases my credit, for to them a letter with the Minister's seal is, 
 of course, from the Minister. * * * is there any chance of an order ? 
 Is that one of Jacque's getting on at all ? 
 
 " I shake your hand. J--F. Millet. 
 
 " Do Rousseau's pictures make a good effect ? Are they a success ? " 
 
 This precious letter shows at once the programme and the char- 
 acter of Millet. His rustic art is at last proclaimed, as w^ell as his 
 philosophy, or rather his aesthetic theories. He opens a corner of 
 his heart and shows us what he loves. A gay, even comic note, 
 ends his letter : for he does not want to be thought a complainer, 
 and, like all dreamy and impressible spirits, soon quits the melancholy 
 tone to laugh a little at the foibles of humanity. 
 
 We can not mention all the pictures of this kind, but we 
 remember several touching scenes : one the " Young Women 
 Sewing," an interior full of the calm and seriousness of family life. 
 "They are not seamstresses," he said; "they are the women of the 
 house doing the work of the house." This picture brought Millet an 
 order from the Minister of the Interior. The four seasons were 
 also charming compositions, afterward enlarged. Here was the first 
 thought of "The Gleaners," which stood for autumn. Spring was 
 represented by the culture of the vine, — two men are binding the 
 vine-branches to the poles, while on a hill near a woman is tending 
 her cows. The atmosphere is full of wintry vapor, softening the rays 
 of a setting sun. The execution is as delicate as Ostade's. "The 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 95 
 
 Man Spreading Manure" is also of this time. Millet took great 
 pains with this composition, in which the solemn landscape is already 
 chilled by the first frosts of November. 
 
 Though fixed in a country which he liked, Millet still turned his 
 eyes toward his home, where were his aged mothers, weakened by 
 age, illnesses, and anxieties. The grandmother, the spiritual head 
 of the family, declined visibly ; she could no longer write to her 
 Francois anything but lamentation and religious exhortation. Wheat 
 was dear, and beggars and vagabonds made their charity a heavy 
 burden. They could not sleep for thinking that their dear Francois 
 suffered, too, in these times of trouble. 
 
 Millet's grandmother, Louise Jumelin, dieci in the beginning of 
 185 I, without having embraced her "Benjamin," her Francois, who 
 had grown up under her wing, and whom she thought of until her last 
 breath. Her grandchild was overwhelmed with sorrow. Millet did 
 not speak for days, and his mute grief was pitiful to see. The tears 
 which he was trying to repress would spring at a word, and he could 
 only sob, Oh, why could I not have seen her once more ! " 
 
 He thought now of his mother. Alas! her existence was painful 
 enough. Ill, with all the responsibility of the management of the 
 farm, the fever for Paris seizing her children one by one, she felt as if 
 everything were giving way beneath her. The patrimony was all 
 going piecemeal, and there was no future for her children. Loneliness 
 crept upon her ; her daughters were marrying, her sons were leaving 
 the village. 
 
 " My dear child," she wrote, " you say you are very anxious to come to 
 see us and stay a little while with us. I am very anxious, too, but it seems 
 
96 
 
 JlLAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 you have not much means. How do you manage to Hve ? My poor child, 
 when I begin to think of this I am very uncomfortable. Ah, I hope you will 
 come and surprise us some time when we expect it the least. For myself, I 
 can neither live nor die, I am so anxious to see you. I have neglected 
 writing to you because I thought to see you during the summer, but now it is 
 past, and indeed we are very anxious to see you. I have nothing now left me 
 but to suffer and die. My poor child, if you could only come before the 
 winter! I have such a great desire to see you one single time more. I 
 think of you oftener than you imagine. I am tired of suffering in body and 
 soul. When 1 wonder how you will get on in the future without money, 
 I can neither rest nor sleep. 
 
 " Tell us how you do, whether you have work and make money, and sell 
 your pictures. It is surprising that you don't speak of the revolutions in 
 Paris. Is it true that there are any ? Tell us something about them. I am 
 so afraid that you will get caught in all this business. Will you come soon ? 
 Ah, if I had wings to fly to you ! As soon as you get this letter, write 
 again. I end by kissing you with all my heart, and I am with all pos- 
 sible love your mother. Widow Millet." 
 
 It is not surprising that the son combined the religious ardor of 
 the grandmother with the tenderness of the mother. 
 
 She did not last much longer. A suffocating asthma made her 
 as weak as an octogenarian. Life remained in her only in the 
 thought of her children, — the hope of seeing her Fran9ois, who 
 had always given her respect and affection. She waited like the 
 mothers in the old legends, — listening for his footfall, hoping vainly 
 for a surprise which never came. Poor Francois, too, waited ; 
 poverty, the fatal companion of his life, did not give him a 
 moment's grace. 
 
 She waited two years, until 1853, and died in prayer and hope. 
 Her son, a hundred leagues off, traced on paper the sorrows of his 
 
The Old Wood-cutter. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 99 
 
 mother. He thought of Tobit and his wife, who also waited, and he 
 sketched a scene in which two old people look toward the sky, and 
 try to find a human form amid the glories of the setting sun. The 
 Waiting," a picture exhibited some years later, was here begun. 
 
VI. 
 
 Americans in Barbizon — Hard Times — Two Visits to Normandy. 
 
 IS art a natural language which ah can understand ? Is a particular 
 education and aptitude necessary to appreciate its beauties? The 
 common man, and even certain really poetic intelligences, do they 
 rebel against the thoughts of painters and sculptors ? We leave to 
 others the work of answering these questions. Certainly our modern 
 geniuses have not shown an understanding of plastic art, and, among 
 the shepherds of men, many see^' i to us blind in this matter. The 
 state, the natural protector of art, long went astray, both in its public 
 manifestations, and in the choice of its acquisitions or orders. And 
 yet," said Millet, "it seems to me that the Pharaohs did not let the 
 genius of ancient Egypt die, and that Pericles was lucky in the choice 
 of a builder of the Parthenon ; Alexander did not make humiliating 
 demands upon Praxiteles; the Antonines allowed art, in their day, to 
 attain to the greatest beauty. But in our day it is nothing but an 
 accessory, a pleasing talent ; whereas, of old, and in the Middle Ages, 
 it was a pillar of society, its conscience, and the expression of its 
 religious sentiment. 
 
 I JO 
 
JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET. lOI 
 
 What have the great men of our day done for the arts ? Less 
 than nothing. Lamartine (1 saw him choose his favorite picture in 
 the Salon of 1848) cared only for a subject which related to his polit- 
 ical or literary preoccupations. He would never have found a place 
 in his house for a picture by Rembrandt. Victor Hugo puts Louis 
 Boulanger and Delacroix on the same line. Georges Sand has a 
 woman's prudence, and gets out of the difficulty by beautiful words. 
 Alexandre Dumas is in the hands of Delacroix, but he can not think 
 freely outside of the painter of Shakspere and Goethe. I have never 
 discovered a single well-felt page in Balzac, Eugene Sue, Frederic 
 Soulie, Barbier, Mery, .etc., — one page which could guide us or show 
 a real comprehension of art ; and that is the reason I was cold in 
 meeting Prudhon when he came to see Diaz." 
 
 In 1850, or '51, Millet had been in a dark corner of Diaz's studio, 
 when Prudhon carne in. Millet turned a moment to look at the new- 
 comer, and immediately began to work again at his picture. 
 
 In the Salon of 1853, Millet exhibited ''Ruth and Boaz," The 
 Sheep-shearer," and "The Shepherd," all highly praised by Gautier, 
 Paul de Saint Victor, and Pelloquet. Millet received a second-class 
 medal. His "Ruth and Boaz" was bought by an American, and his 
 two other pictures were purchased by Mr. William Morris Hunt. 
 The latter had lived for several years in Paris. A pupil of Couture, 
 he had become seriously enamored of Millet's works, and, to study 
 quietly the man and the painter, made himself a comfortable home in 
 Barbizon, and led the gay life of every American who lives in the 
 good land of France. Other strangers, such as Mr. Hearn, painter, 
 and Mr. Babcock, to whom Millet had given some lessons in 1848, 
 
I02 JKAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 came to visit Mr. Hunt.* There was thus formed a sort of colony of 
 artists, fervent disciples of Millet, who, by their purchases, lightened 
 his poverty. But these windfalls could scarcely fill the holes made by 
 a life which had always been hard. Like Rousseau, Millet had around 
 him a group of tradesmen, anxious and almost fierce, whom he had 
 to appease. A baker, the only one in the place, threatened with 
 oaths to withdraw the daily bread. A grocer had become his bailiff. 
 A country tailor — the antipodes of the patient Parisian tradesman — 
 sent the sheriff's officer to sell the furniture in his studio, and he 
 would not allow the artist a day's, or even an hour's, grace. Such 
 scenes were repeated over and over during many years. 
 
 When I re-read the letters of Millet, written in these unfortunate 
 times, I find them always containing a dignified, calm statement of his 
 sufferings. He hides nothing, complains of nothing, merely tells the 
 bald fact, which is thus still the more touching. All these cruel con- 
 fidences end with these words : " Try, my dear Sensier, to coin some 
 money with my pictures ; sell them at any price, but send me one 
 hundred francs, fifty, or even thirty, for the time approaches. * * *" 
 Then I trotted all over Paris, offering dealers and amateurs the 
 paintings of my friend. Some grinned, or sent me off as a madman ; 
 others, more rarely, bought, but at laughable prices. I went to 
 my comrades. I told them they could buy with confidence, and 
 that I would take the picture back if, later, they came to the con- 
 clusion that they had made a bad bargain. In this way I made some 
 sales, and, after a month or two, back would come the painting, with 
 
 * [Among the other American artists who knew Millet at Barbizon were Wyatt Eaton, 
 Edward Wheelwright, and Will H. Low. — Trans. ] 
 
The New-born. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 105 
 
 the words, Decidedly, I don't care for this artist; I Hke anything 
 else better" — a new embarrassment for me. I honored my promises, 
 but only by superhuman efforts, loans, combinations. Thus I 
 acquired many pictures of Millet in spite of myself, as it were, and 
 by the mere force of circumstances. Later, some of these stubborn 
 amateurs came to me for the same pictures, but I refused, saying : 
 It is too late; your pictures are in my harem, and I will just let you 
 see them, like Candaules and Gyges. But the mold is not broken. 
 Go to Millet; he will serve you." That was a time of trials, 
 struggles, and humiliating, picturesque inventions to get us out of 
 difficulties. I see it all through a mist, which changes sometimes 
 into splendid rainbows, for I was as convinced as of a mathematical 
 fact that Millet was a great painter. 
 
 I do not speak of the man. I was attached to Millet as to 
 an elder brother, who revealed to me all the beauties and attractions 
 of life, — a sage whose temper was ever even, whose welcome was 
 always kind, and who taught me to rid myself of superfluities, and 
 showed me the true paths of life. These times are gone. Millet 
 is dead, — glorious, but killed before his time by the incessant battles 
 in which his strength could not but fail. " In art," he used to say, 
 "you have to 'give your skin.'" In spite of everything, Millet did 
 not despair. He felt that he had a great career, if he only could get 
 bread enough to hold out. 
 
 Rousseau at this time was scarcely more favored. Their inti- 
 macy was very slow to form. Millet, more straightened than he, 
 only let him know, in a joking way, part of his troubles. Rousseau, 
 defiant, always on his guard, only later opened his heart to Millet; but 
 14 
 
I06 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 at last they began to believe in each other, and they then commenced 
 an exchange of impressions and ideas which had a great influence on 
 Rousseau. Toward 1852, the latter used to consult his friend on the 
 subject of his pictures and his projects. Millet sometimes dared to 
 tell him point-blank his opinions — a difficult thing for Rousseau 
 to accept. They even had some notions about working together. 
 
 The death of his mother made it absolutely necessary for him 
 to go home and attend to the division of the inheritance. He was 
 fortunate enough to sell some canvases, and left Barbizon the first 
 days of May. Meeting at Gruchy, the eight children of Jean-Louis- 
 Nicolas Millet divided his inheritance. Francois only asked for the 
 books that had belonged to his great- uncle, and the great wardrobe of 
 oak, which from father to son had come down uninjured. He left his 
 part of the house and the land to be enjoyed by one of his brothers, 
 who lived at Gruchy. And so, the family wealth being reduced 
 to the smallest fractions, Millet started again for Barbizon, impatient 
 to rejoin his wife and children. 
 
 Times became a trifle better. Some amateurs liked his drawings, 
 and were never tired of increasing their collections. These drawings 
 had not yet reached the beauty of those of a later date retouched 
 with pastel, nor of those other admirable compositions which were 
 seen after his death ; but the artist then, as always, saw the fun- 
 damental characteristic of all country scenes, and rendered them in a 
 style of his own and with a striking individuality. Most of these 
 drawings are on gray or blue paper, with the lights touched in with 
 Chinese white, and the shadows in stump, and are swiftly done, as by 
 a man master of his subject. They are almost all the first thought 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 107 
 
 of a composition, and if later they became pastel or painting, the 
 disposition and effect were not changed. The image was instantly 
 fixed in the mental vision of Millet, for he did nothing that was 
 not deliberate, thoughtful, sought out, and when the picture came, it 
 was complete and definite in a few strokes. But it distressed Millet to 
 be reduced to work which fatigued his brain by constant invention. 
 At this moment good luck arrived in the shape of a buyer, who 
 was welcomed as a savior. 
 
 Perhaps it may seem that I unveil too much of the secret corner 
 of Millet's life, — of his poverty. But of such a man everything is of 
 value, and to see him always dignified and serene amid the storms 
 of life, meeting his fate by work, calm love of his art, and such 
 persistent self-abnegation, it will be admitted that his poverty ought 
 to raise him in our esteem. 
 
 The new buyer was not a casual passer-by. Rousseau had dis- 
 covered him, and, as usual, had sent him to Millet. M. Letrone did 
 not stop ; he ordered two more pictures, among others the beautiful 
 composition of the woman feeding chickens, whose price was the 
 enormous one of two thousand francs. Millet worth two thousand 
 francs! and how would he use this treasure? To make his house 
 comfortable and enjoy his wealth ? Not at all. He thinks of home, 
 and goes off, in June, 1854, with all his children, to La Hague. 
 He went for one month and staid four. 
 
 At Greville, he found neither his father nor his two mothers. 
 Only his eldest sister and one of his brothers remained in the village 
 — a new generation. The old friends of his childhood were under the 
 grass of the cemetery. The first days were sad enough, but the fields. 
 
I08 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 the active life of the house, and the pure air from the diffs, restored 
 his tone. He drew, with a son's affection, everything which the 
 family had owned : the house, the garden, the cider-mill, the stables, 
 the orchard, the hedges, the pastures, and covered ways of the 
 ancestral house. These sketches and notes, taken in all the neigh- 
 borhood around, served him later for his compositions. 
 
 One evening he was returning to Gruchy, the " Angelus " was 
 just ringing, and he found himself at the door of the little church of 
 Eculleville. He went in ; at the altar an old man was praying. He 
 waited, and when the old priest rose, he struck him gently on the 
 shoulder, and said: Fran9ois." It was the Abbe Jean Lebrisseux, 
 his first teacher. 
 
 ''Ah, is it you, dear child, little Fran9ois ? " and they embraced, 
 weeping. 
 
 *' And the Bible, Frangois, have you forgotten it ? and the 
 Psalms, do you ever read them ? " 
 
 They are my breviary," said Millet. *' I get from them all 
 that I do." 
 
 These are rare words to hear nowadays, but you will be rewarded. 
 You used to love Virgil." 
 ''I love him still." 
 
 " It is well. I am content. Where I sowed, good grain has 
 grown, and you will reap the harvest, my son." 
 
 At night-fall they separated. Millet started again for Paris, 
 where new work and new disappointments awaited him, but his stay 
 at Gruchy was profitable to his future. He never exhausted the 
 stock of characteristic subjects which he brought back with him. His 
 
The Reaper. 
 
( 
 
 1 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 name began to grow. The new rustic art of Millet had made the 
 young men think ; at once literal and imaginative, it roused in some 
 minds a whole world of polrtical and social problems. Some called 
 him the brother of -Pierre Dupont, the singer of peasants, and the 
 eloquent ally of Lachambeaudie, the novelist of the sorrows of the 
 people. " The Sower " cursed the rich, they said, because he flung 
 his grain with anger toward the sky. Every one talked of the artist's 
 work, and tried to make it a weapon. But Millet did not consider 
 himself so important or so revolutionary. No subversive idea 
 troubled his brain. Sociahstic doctrines he would not listen to ; the 
 little that came to his ears, he said, was not clear. He often said : 
 My programme is work. * Thou shalt gain thy bread in the sweat 
 of thy brow ' was written centuries ago. Immutable destiny, which 
 none may change ! What every one ought to do is to find progress 
 in his profession, to try ever to do better, to be strong and clever in 
 his trade, and be greater than his neighbor in talent and conscien- 
 tiousness in his work. That for me is the only path. The rest 
 is dream or calculation." 
 
VII. 
 
 The Universal Exhibition of i8^^ — The Invisible American — Millefs 
 Anxieties — His Artistic Progress — The Gleaners y 
 
 IN the Universal Exhibition of 1855, our artists were the most 
 praised. Delacroix, declared to be the master of French mas- 
 ters, was here triumphant, and Theodore Rousseau, for the first 
 time in his life, found nothing but admirers. All his pictures, 
 refused for the last twenty years, came back like victorious exiles, 
 and showed themselves in this cosmopolitan Salon. The reaction had 
 come, against the injustice of the Institute toward the school of 
 1830. It became an enthusiasm. It went, perhaps, too far, and 
 Rousseau, fearful of the future, dreaded the recoil of a movement too 
 intense to endure. 
 
 Millet had long prepared and studied a subject inspired by 
 Virgil, his favorite poet. It was a simple scene — a peasant grafting a 
 tree in his garden, near his wife and child. Himself a man with a 
 family, he thought of the future of his children, of the father who 
 works for his successors. His picture was understood. Theophile 
 Gautier did him the honor of a description : 
 
JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET. 
 
 113 
 
 " We begin our review of the country scenes by the picture of M. J.-F. 
 Millet, ' A Peasant Grafting a Tree.' Very different from the ugly mannerists 
 who, under the plea of realism, substitute hideousness for truth, M. Millet 
 seeks and finds style in the representation of types and scenes of country life. 
 His * Sower,' exhibited some years ago, had a rare grandeur and elevation, 
 though its rusticity was not in the least softened ; but the gesture with which 
 the poor workman threw the sacred wheat into the furrow was so beautiful, 
 that Triptolemus guided by Ceres, on some Greek bass-relief, could not have 
 had more majesty. An old felt hat, all rusty and faded, earth-stained rags, a 
 coarse linen shirt, were his costume. The color was subdued — austere even 
 to melancholy ; the execution solid, thick, almost heavy, without any brilliancy 
 of touch. Yet this picture made the same impression as the beginning of the 
 ' Mare au Diable ' of Georges Sand — a profound and solemn melancholy. 
 The Peasant Grafting a Tree ' is a composition of extreme simplicity, which 
 does not draw the eye, but holds it long, once the attention is turned to it. 
 * * * The man seems to accomplish some mystic ceremony, and to be 
 the obscure priest of a divinity of the country ; his serious profile, with strong, 
 pure lines, does not lack a sort of melancholy grace, though retaining entirely 
 the peasant character; a dull color, kept purposely low, wraps the scene and 
 the figures like a thick rustic stuff. How strange is art ! These two quiet 
 figures on a gray ground, performing an ordinary work, occupy your mind and 
 make you dream, while the most ingenious thoughts carefully rendered leave 
 you as cold as ice. It is because M. Millet understands the hidden poetry of 
 the fields ; he loves the peasants whom he paints, and in their resigned faces 
 expresses his sympathy with them ; sowing, reaping, grafting, are to him holy 
 acts having their own beauty and nobility. Why should not the peasant have 
 a style, like the hero ? Doubtless M. Millet has said this to himself, and he 
 paints Georgics in which, under a heavy form and a somber color, glows a 
 melancholy recollection of Virgil. * * * " 
 
 The Peasant Grafting" had therefore its admirers, and Rousseau 
 was not the least. He found an American who bought it for four 
 thousand francs cash ; the American remained invisible, but paid in 
 
 15 
 
114 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 good gold through the hands of Rousseau. This generous stranger 
 wished to remain unknown. Some weeks later we discovered the 
 fabulous American to be no other than Theodore Rousseau, who 
 wanted to hide his good deed. Already the year before he had 
 bought from Millet the Peasant Spreading Manure," — a fine picture, 
 in which the man stands out against a wide autumn landscape. 
 
 The year 1855 was a lucky one to Millet. He diminished his 
 debts, and could devote himself to some pictures which he had 
 already thought of. But this sort of ease could not last. Millet had 
 heavy burdens, and a family increased by two brothers, who had left 
 their homes and come to him for home and protection in the vocation 
 of artist, which they wished, like him, to follow. Millet was a long 
 time their teacher and their support. But until the end of 1855 he 
 got along pretty well. Millet loved to see at his table all his little 
 children, his friends, and those who cared for his art It was a numer- 
 ous gathering, and always gay. Rousseau, Diaz, Barye, Campredon, 
 etc., enjoyed visiting there, and Millet, whom we have often found sad 
 in his letters, had a really delightful gayety. His good humor became 
 wit; his paradoxes, his raillery, were full of biting points. When 
 others talked, he would draw for hours with the point of his knife, on 
 the table-cloth, forms that were in his mind or before his eyes. He 
 never stopped his production ; in the studio he painted, — outside, he 
 thought or took notes. When with his friends he drew, mechanically, 
 the commonest things ; if a question came up of perspective, form, 
 drawing, he figured it out and solved the problem. How happy he 
 was returning to Barbizon from Paris, his pockets full of toys and 
 cakes for the children ! How different from those dismal evenings 
 
i 
 
 i 
 
 il 
 
PEASANT AND FAINTER. 
 
 117 
 
 when he returned with empty hands, and had for answer to the 
 impatient voices that asked at the door-sill whether he had something 
 beautiful from Paris : Ah, my poor dears, I went too late — the shop 
 was shut." All would go in, saddened, and Millet had for their conso- 
 lation nothing but stories and songs. Unfortunately, the days without 
 clouds and creditors soon passed, and the first day of the year 1856 
 brought melancholy New Year's presents to him. This year and the 
 following can be put down as a time of famine and extreme trial. 
 
 " Barbizon, January ist, 1856. 
 
 " My Dear Sensier : The hour of breaking-down has come, decidedly. 
 I have just found a summons to pay within twenty-four hours to M. X., 
 tailor, the sum of 607 fr. 60 c. He is a vampire, as he promised to take a 
 note till March. On the other hand, G. refused bread and was disgustingly 
 rude. It has come ! A whole procession of creditors will file through the 
 house ; it will be very lively. 
 
 " I have just seen the bailiff, and told him in my ignorance that credit 
 was a usual and well-known thing. Does not the law allow an arrangement ? 
 A tradesman can catch you in a trap by offering you a year's credit, and at 
 the end of six months bring you a bill and force you to pay I Yes, the law 
 knows nothing of these things — you must pay ! This explains to me my want 
 of aptitude at business, for as far as I can see you must put aside all clear 
 reasoning and all good sense to learn chicanery, which is nothing better than 
 subtle cheating. Since the law has the right to collar me, pray tell me what 
 they will do to me, for I can not admit its right to violence except on refusal 
 of payment. I thought it was the business of the law to court conciliation. 
 Tell me, for I have a hard head, how far people can go who want to proceed 
 to the uttermost and whose conscience never troubles them, for one might 
 revolt against what is legal and say, 'That is wrong — odious.' I want you 
 to tell me just what they can do. Rousseau, to whom I told the story of the 
 bailiff, is furious. 
 
 " Write immediately. I shake hands. J.-F. Millet." 
 
Il8 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 I only give this letter as a specimen of the melancholy position 
 of Millet, and of his anxieties. I have under my eyes monthly, 
 weekly, sometimes daily letters, forming a sort of inventory of his 
 tortures, but I abstain from pubHshing this painful correspondence. 
 
 When he suffered too much, he would call for help. Then his 
 friends would lay down every other occupation, and without comment 
 or explanation, concert together and endeavor to save him and give 
 him peace. 
 
 Should I be silent, and leave these witnesses to his pain in 
 obscurity ? Should his life with its sufferings be hidden ? Who, after 
 his wife and children are gone, and I have rejoined him myself, — who 
 will read these five hundred letters, the journal of a man of genius ? 
 I had almost forgotten these evil times; I remembered only that I 
 once fought for a noble and brave soul. Other misfortunes had 
 swallowed up their memory. 
 
 These letters I find eloquent, religious, loyal. Have I the right 
 to suppress them ? It would be cruel to publish them all in the 
 present generation. I will only give extracts to show that I keep 
 even inside of the facts ; if I reproduced the whole of the correspond- 
 ence, it would read like the story of starving people in a desert. A 
 few fragments will suffice: 
 
 "Ah ! the end of the month — where shall I find the money for it? For 
 the children must eat." 
 
 " My heart is all black." 
 
 " If you knew how dark the future, even the near future, looks ! At 
 least, let me work to the end." 
 
 " I have a series of headaches which interrupt my work very often. I am 
 very much behindhand. Suppose I can't get done for the end of the month!" 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 119 
 
 He constantly expects to sell, has promises, is disappointed, or 
 payment is retarded. He writes to Rousseau, who, on his part, 
 found only indifference for, or lack of interest in, the beautiful 
 drawings of Millet : 
 
 " How I bore you, my poor Rousseau ! You are a good proof that 
 those whose hearts are kind live the life of victims. Do not think that I am 
 unmindful of all the trouble that I put you to, but I can't help bothering you. 
 I seem to be under a sort of spell — Ah ! I must stop. I can not and I dare 
 not say what I think on this subject. 
 
 " I am working like a slave to get my picture done [' The Gleaners ']. I 
 am sure I don't know what will come of all the pains that I give myself. 
 Some days I think this wretched picture has no sense. At any rate, I must 
 have a month of quiet work on it. If only it is not too disgraceful ! Head- 
 aches, big and little, have besieged me this month to such an extent that I have 
 had scarcely a quarter of an hour of my painting-time. Physically and morally 
 I am going down-hill. You are right. Life is a sad thing, and few spots in it 
 are places of refuge. We come to understand those who sighed for a place of 
 refreshment, of light, and of peace. One understands what Dante makes 
 some of his people say, speaking of the time that they passed on earth — ^ the 
 thne of 7ny debt' — Well, let us hold out as long as we can." 
 
 Finally, like a last cry, he wrote these words alone : Come ! 
 Come ! " 
 
 Amidst these miseries, his head always ill, and disquiet and fear 
 ever following him, Millet painted his most beautiful works : The 
 Gleaners," ''The Angelus," and ''Waiting." As soon as his health 
 came back, he felt a returning interest in his peasant life. 
 
 " I am decidedly better; I have begun to work again. My projects of 
 buying a house are for the time in abeyance. I do not want to go into an 
 affair from which I would not know how to get out, all the more that, even if 
 
I20 JEAN-FRAN(;OIS MILLET, 
 
 I put myself to so much inconvenience, 1 do not find anything exactly to my 
 mind. I will wait. Pierre, my youngest brother, has come to Barbizon. 
 Hunt has been here several days. Will Rousseau come ? J--F. Millet." 
 
 The year 1856, an infernal year, did not seem to affect Millet. 
 The more he suffered the more he w^ithdrew into solitude to bring 
 forth great things. He was very much interested in a type of which 
 Barbizon gave him the best examples, — the shepherd, — and painted 
 several. The shepherd is not a countryman after the pattern of the 
 laborers and other field-hands ; he is an enigma, a mystery; he lives 
 alone, his only companions his dog and his flock. From Easter to 
 Martinmas he sleeps in the open air, in a movable hut, which makes 
 him a nightly guardian of his flock. In winter he goes over the wet 
 ground to find the slightest spear of vegetation. In spring he helps 
 the ewes in the bringing forth of their young, and cares for them. 
 He is the guardian, the guide, the physician of the flock. Besides, 
 he is a man of contemplation. He knows the stars, watches the 
 sky, and predicts the weather. The whole life of the atmosphere is 
 familiar to him. This solitary being greatly interested Millet. One 
 picture, painted in 1856, a shepherd bringing home his flock at 
 sunset, has a Homeric simplicity and beauty. Another, near a rock 
 in the shadow of a wood, looks out on the world of sunlight, where 
 two men labor wearily, and seems almost glad of the misery of 
 others. Another watches the horizon and the little cloud in the 
 east. Of a picture of a shepherd in the fold, at night, a weird 
 moonlight effect, he said : 
 
 " Oh, how I wish I could make those who see my work feel the 
 splendors and terrors of the night! One ought to be able to make people 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 123 
 
 hear the songs, the silences and murmurings of the air. They should feel the 
 infinite. Is there not something terrible in thinking of these lights which rise 
 and disappear, century after century, without varying ? They light both the 
 joys and sorrows of men, and when our world goes to pieces, the beneficent 
 sun will watch without pity the universal desolation." 
 
 Once we heard the details of a dreadful murder which had been 
 committed in the forest. 
 
 ''Horror!" cried Millet. ''And he [the sun] did not stop in 
 dismay, did not turn backward upon his course ! These stars are 
 implacable." 
 
 The end of this hard year everything seemed to fail ; his few 
 patrons were absorbed by the sale of the works of Campredon, who 
 had just died. Something had to be done, and I went to some of my 
 richest friends, asking them to subscribe to a work of charity. No 
 one asked me its destination. I got together a hundred francs. 
 
 " Sunday Evening, 7th December, 1856. 
 " My Dear Sensier : I have received the hundred francs, and I thank 
 you ten times over. * * * Rousseau will write to you about my pictures 
 at the Campredon sale. * * * If I have not the spleen, which you tell me 
 not to take to myself as bosom companion, I have a settled weariness, but no 
 anger against any one, or anything, for I do not think myself any more a 
 victim than lots of other people ; but I am afraid of getting tired out. It has 
 lasted nearly twenty years. Well, it has not been the fault of my friends 
 that it has not been different ; that is a consolation to me." 
 
 Rousseau would have come to his assistance had he not been 
 
 himself very much embarrassed ; but the Barbizon people were 
 
 willing to give credit to M. Rousseau, who knew how to manage a 
 creditor. He worked hard for Millet at the sale. 
 
124 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 I do not know what Millet himself thought of his immense 
 progress. Doubtless he must have seen that the time had come 
 when, confident in his powers, he could express his thought with 
 lucidity and strength. But he said nothing; and lonely in his own 
 studio he mused on, telling little to his friends. He was sad and 
 absorbed. His letters were few, but affectionate and full of tender 
 melancholy. His affairs were in a bad state, and there seemed no 
 chance of their bettering ; the public of Paris was hostile, and, 
 except by a few art-lovers and exceptional merchants, he was con- 
 sidered the painter of the ugly, and the libeler of the country. 
 Yet he did not alter the character of rusticity which he wished to 
 carry to its extreme limit. 
 
 I risk all," said he, with a shrug. I have ventured my neck, 
 and I am not going to give up now." 
 
 " Let no one think," he added, that they can force me to 
 prettify my types ; I would rather do nothing than express myself 
 feebly. Give me sign-boards to paint ; give me yards of canvas to 
 cover by the day, like a house-painter, — but let me imagine and 
 execute my own work in my own way." 
 
 On this subject he was immovable. 
 Yet, one sees handsome peasants, pretty country girls." 
 Yes, yes ; but their beauty is not in their faces ; it is in the 
 expression of their figures and their appropriate action. Your pretty 
 peasant girls do not do well for picking up wood, gleaning in 
 the August sun, drawing water from a well. If I am to paint a 
 mother, I shall try to make her beautiful simply by her look at 
 her child. Beauty is expression." 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. I 25 
 
 The glory of our time, the invention of 1830, every one knows 
 now, is the splendor of modern landscape. Theodore Rousseau and 
 Jules Dupre were the pioneers. They understood that the depth and 
 perspective of the sky, the natural colors, the exact truth, had a right 
 to exist in art. It was the revelation of a new world. And obeying 
 this thought, they neglected, without knowing it, the presence of 
 man. Their works were bold enough to absorb their strength, and 
 full enough of passion to move public opinion. 
 
 Millet wished to give to man the principal role, and yet give 
 to landscape the importance, the grandeur and truth of a creation 
 within his creation. Until now. Millet has half feared his task. The 
 landscape which surrounds his figures is secondary, and sometimes 
 heavy. Except in The Sower " and some little canvases, Millet 
 retained the old tradition, the sacrifice of the landscape to the 
 figure. 
 
 Now all changes. Millet has found the key. From this time on, 
 his figures, as principal subjects, will be luminous against a luminous 
 sky, melt, and yet be accented in the same atmosphere, without 
 artifice of effect or help of accident. 
 
 To whom did he owe this discovery ? To his own profound 
 knowledge of outdoor life. He knew so thoroughly the laws of 
 perspective and the play of light, that his figures melted like other 
 accessories into a universal harmony. His knowledge was so exact 
 of how to paint a scene, in the place and with the movement 
 familiar to him, that his exactitude became a charm. He painted the 
 air, he fixed the light, he saw the invisible. But for that he required 
 the best drawing, the balanced proportion of the diverse movements 
 
126 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 of the human figure, and all the aid of long- meditated knowledge. 
 This knowledge he had acquired at the price of immense study. But, 
 what none could teach, he had by virtue of his genius — gesture, atti- 
 tude, movement in the greatest truthfulness, expression at its highest 
 point His aim was admirable yet dangerous. One step beyond, and 
 the artist would have fallen into over-characterization. Millet, a man 
 of emotion, yet also of judgment, kept his imagination in hand ; and 
 if he was not entirely satisfied with his ideal conception, he left it for 
 months and years until it became worthy of him. But he had such a 
 horror of weakening the type of his peasants that sometimes he went 
 too far — though this was rare. 
 
 At the Salon of 1857, Millet had a picture which gave him a 
 distinct position before the public, namely: ''The Gleaners." The 
 artists — those who had insight — were surprised at a picture finer 
 than anything he had yet done, and admired it without reserve. They 
 saw it had knowledge, a fine style, atmosphere, and modeling. But 
 the critics divided into two camps. Some wished to find in it a plea 
 against the misery of the people ; others declared that these three 
 poor women were savage beasts threatening the social order. On the 
 art question (the only one really at stake), the judges were not 
 less divided. 
 
 It is true that Millet was a man of his time. Himself a peasant, 
 and used to the hard toil of the fields, he always had in his heart 
 compassion and pity for the miserable poor of the country. He was 
 neither a socialist nor an idealist, but, like all deep thinkers, he loved 
 humanity ; he suffered with its woes, and longed to express them. 
 For this, he only needed to paint the peasant at his work. In spite 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 127 
 
 of himself, and without knowing it, he entered into the heart of 
 the question. But they wronged him in imputing to him a doctrine 
 which was repulsive to his nature, and which his conscience reproved. 
 The critics put upon him the stigma of a vanquished partisan to the 
 end of his Hfe. There was no use in his repeating that he was entirely 
 resigned to the eternal destiny of man; that his art was only a desire 
 to formulate his sensations, to tell again what life had taught him. 
 Such simple conscientiousness was never believed. 
 
 " 13th January, 1858. 
 " Dear Sensier: Here at last is the 'Wheat- Ear.'* Try to get Durand- 
 Ruel to pay a little before the end of the month. Do it cleverly and 
 promptly, but don't let him think me in great need. You understand. I 
 tremble to see the approach of one of those moments you know so well. I 
 may say, ' the hour is nigh ! ' J--F. Millet." 
 
 * "The Wheat-Ear " was a drawing which Millet sent to me for a lady who had asked 
 for a "line from his own hand." Wlien he was very much begged, he would send a drawing 
 to me. For ladies it was always wheat-ears ; for men whom he scarcely knew, it was a pair 
 of sabots. He has sent me five or six for distant admirers. They were his coat of arms, as 
 it were. 
 
VIII. 
 
 ''The Angehis'' — ''Death and the Wood-cutter'' — Visits from 
 Decamps — A Three Years Contract. 
 
 Millet's life consumed itself away: work, illness, anxiety, credit 
 
 ors, and difficulty in getting paid even for the work he delivered. 
 If he and I had not had youth, with its power of resistance, it 
 would have ended tragically. Twice the idea of suicide haunted the 
 mind of Millet. 
 
 " Suicide," he said, as if to himself, " is the act of a bad man — 
 and then — wife, children, a fine inheritance," and Millet looked at 
 me. Then, with a sudden impulse, he cried : " Come, let us go and 
 see the sunset; it will make me feel better." * 
 
 Out in the fields, at the close of day. Millet said : " See those 
 objects which move over there in the shadow, creeping or walking. 
 
 * This wretched thought came to him often, and I have seen several tragic sketches of 
 suicides. One is very dramatic. A painter lies dead at the foot of his easel ; a woman at the 
 dreadful sight lifts her arms, and seems to cry out. But between the thought and the act was 
 a whole world which Millet would never have crossed. 
 
 128 
 
17 
 
JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET. 
 
 They are the spirits of the plain, — in reahty, poor human creatures — 
 a woman bent under her load of grass, another who drags herself 
 along exhausted beneath a fagot of wood. Far off they are grand, — 
 they balance the load on their shoulders, — the sun obscures their 
 outlines; it is beautiful — it is mysterious." So, every time that 
 Millet touched the earth with his foot, he was strengthened and 
 consoled : 
 
 " Sunday Morning, April, 1858. 
 
 " * * * If only this drawing could produce an impression upon 
 Monsieur H. also ; but I do not count upon that. The men who dare admire 
 things in advance of the rest of the world are not common. # * * 
 
 " Do not imagine that I do not like the picture of Corot, ' The Meadow 
 with the Ditch.' Rousseau and I, on the contrary, think the two should go 
 together, each one having its distinct value. You have good reason to be 
 fond of it. What struck us particularly in the other was, that it has the air of 
 having been made by one who did not know how to paint, and who did it as 
 best he could — with a great desire to do it. The painting seems, in fact, to 
 be an original discovery. They are two very beautiful things. We will talk 
 about them ; writing would be endless." 
 
 At last, he had two serious orders — an Immaculate Conception, 
 for the private railway carriage of the Pope, and an order from the 
 Minister. The Virgin was nothing but a very young country girl, 
 gazing astonished at the child in her arms. It was full of a pene- 
 trating charm. We have never heard of it since it left the studio. 
 
 The order from the Minister had been given in 1852, by the 
 Directors of the Beaux Arts. I determined on a campaign in his 
 behalf, and addressed my request to M. Romieu. Millet was suspected 
 of being a demagogue, in spite of all that could be said, and the 
 artists called him an original, a pretentious savage ; so there was no 
 
132 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 result. Finally I took a little picture, the Sewing-Women," and, 
 hiding the name, asked M. Romieu's secretary to hang it in the 
 Director's office, without mentioning the author. It was universally 
 admired. But the triumph came when Paul Delaroche, coming in, 
 saw it, and immediately praised the talent of the author. **A new 
 man," said he; *'find out his name." peasant named Fran9ois 
 
 Millet" ''Millet, — my pupil! A strong man; head full of imagi- 
 nation, and a strong hand. Ah ! I am not surprised." So the order 
 was signed, and Millet had six hundred francs in advance, and must 
 paint the picture ; but he had constant headaches, and work was 
 almost impossible. 
 
 In 1859, Millet finished his painting of "The Angelus." In this 
 truly original picture. Millet wished to give an impression of music; 
 he wanted the noises of the country, and even the church-bells, to 
 be heard. ''Truth of expression will do it," said he. This was one 
 of his favorite pictures; in it he revived his childhood's sensations. 
 As day dies, two peasants, a man and a woman, hear the Angelus ; 
 they rise, stop work, and, standing bareheaded, recite, with eyes cast 
 down, the words ^'Angelus doinini iiuntiavit Maries.'' The man, a 
 true peasant of the plain, his head covered by a mass of short 
 straight hair like a felt hat, prays silently ; the woman is bent and full 
 of devotion. Into it Millet put the whole strength of his color. 
 When I saw it for the first time, it was almost finished ; Millet said 
 to me : " What do you think of it ? " 
 
 " It is the Angelus ! " I cried. 
 
 " It is, indeed. You can hear the bells." And he added: "I 
 am contented ; you understood it. It is all I ask. Then, my dear 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 133 
 
 fellow, you must try to sell this picture," he said, and he sent it to me 
 in Paris. Arthur Stevens looked at it, came back twenty times to 
 see it, was possessed by it He offered it to speculators and picture- 
 buyers. Two months passed in visits and bargaining. All his clients 
 hesitated, until a man of taste, M. Van Praet, the Belgian Minister, 
 ventured on his representation to buy ''The Angelus." While Millet 
 was finishing his ''Death and the Wood-cutter," and "The Woman 
 with a Cow," M. Letrone, who had bought four pictures five years 
 before, sent them to auction, and let them go at prices which would 
 now make us smile. It discouraged Millet about his future pictures. 
 His embarrassments increased ; he was driven to death, and, in 
 January, 1859, he wrote : 
 
 " It is frightful to be stripped naked before such people, not so much for 
 one's pride, which, of course, suffers, as because it is impossible to get what 
 we need. We have wood for only one or two days, and we do not know 
 how to get it^ as they will not give it to us without money. Next month my 
 wife will be confined, and I have nothing. I am suffering and sad. Forgive 
 me for telling you these things. I do not pretend to be more unfortunate 
 than a lot of other people, but each feels his own pain. If you can stir up a 
 little those who can get me an order, I will thank you more than ever. I 
 will only believe it when I see it. I am working on the drawings of Alfred 
 Feydeau, whose money I beg you to send as soon as you get it, for the 
 children cannot be without a fire. So much the worse for the end of the 
 month! J.-F. Millet." 
 
 The 20th of March brings the same difficulties and complaints. 
 How to get him out of the bailifi"'s hands ! Necessity is the mother 
 of invention, and I discover an expedient. A few weeks of respite, 
 and he finds that one of his pictures, "Death and the Wood-cutter," 
 
134 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 has been refused by the jury of the Salon. It was the one he had 
 counted on, one of his most beautiful compositions, but the blow does 
 not reach the heart. Millet has his own pride. He sees a deliberate 
 design to hurt him in his means of livelihood, and he stiffens his back 
 to bear injustice. He believes that a strong hand wishes to strike him 
 down privately, and he braves those who take advantage of their 
 strength and accidental power. " Vidi praevaricantes,'' he wrote on 
 the edge of a drawing, and that was all his vengeance. He said to 
 me : They wish to force me into their drawing-room art, to break 
 my spirit. No, no. I was born a peasant, and a peasant I will die. 
 I will say what I feel. I paint things as I see them, and I will hold 
 my ground without retreating one sabot; and, if necessary, I will 
 fight for honor." And he ended, laughing, " Sensier, let us save the 
 honor of the convent ! " The rejection of Death and the Wood- 
 cutter " made a great noise, for no one could believe Millet to be so 
 devoid of talent as to merit such treatment. It looked like brute 
 force. Protestations arose, and they were fierce. I will first give the 
 words of Alexandre Dumas (Senior) : 
 
 " Millet lives in the fields. He has them ever under his eye, and he 
 renders them with great truth. Look well, and you will not find in his 
 peasants that sickly stupidity which superficial critics or deliberate detractors 
 choose to see, but the look of calm strength and suffering — of a being who 
 does not realize his sufferings or their reason. 
 
 " The subjects, you say, are melancholy. Who knows if the artist does 
 not tell a story with his brush, as we with our pens ? Who knows if the artist 
 does not write the memoirs of his own soul, and that he is not in despair 
 himself at seeing these poor men work without any hope of calm, of repose, or 
 of happiness ? * * * " 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 1 3/ 
 
 Even the Gazette des Beaux Arts " is indignant. Two of 
 its advance guard open fire — Paul Mantz and Edmond Hedouin. 
 Mantz wrote and Hedouin engraved the picture. Millet writes, 
 April 2d : 
 
 " I will make the drawings, as it seems to be the only present resource, 
 and I will do them as well as I can and as much as possible from real life; 
 but, as you say, one needs a litUe calm to think over one's idea until it has 
 had time to concentrate in the mind, in order to give well its essential part. 
 However, we will do the best we can. Try to get the other picture well 
 hung." 
 
 He came a few days later to Paris, to see Hedouin, who began 
 the etching of "Death and the Wood-cutter." He gave him some 
 help and advice and left, after being assured that he should not be 
 made a cause of anger or propaganda, and begging us to speak only 
 of the refusal of the picture from the point of view of art, and to 
 introduce no politics into the discussion. He returned to Barbizon 
 when he was very ill, spat blood, and was in danger of death. All 
 these violent emotions had their effect upon him, but his strong 
 constitution helped him through. 
 
 " 27 May, 1859. 
 
 " * * * If you knew the trouble I have with my eyes. Ah ! when 
 will He come who will say to me, as to the wretched cripple in the Bible, 
 ' Arise and walk ! ' J.-F Millet." 
 
 Decamps had been living several years at Fontainebleau. He 
 was not at all sociable. One day Millet, while at work, heard a knock 
 at the door of his studio ; a gentleman with a large beard came in 
 and said : 
 18 
 
138 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 I am Decamps, the painter, and I have come to see you as 
 to see an old acquaintance.". 
 
 Millet, surprised, answered only by a silent welcome. 
 
 Your pictures please me very much. You go to work with 
 freshness and without fatigue. Will you show me what you are 
 doing ?" 
 
 Millet showed him all he considered worthy of Decamps, 
 who became silent, looking at him as an unhappy man looks at a 
 happy one. 
 
 "Ah, that is good — painted as I should like to paint. You don't 
 know what hard work it is to get rid of a bad education. I like to 
 see painting young, vigorous, and healthy. Courbet often, does some 
 fine things, but the man lacks common sense. He will never paint a 
 picture." 
 
 Decamps had come to see Millet almost on the sly. He had left 
 his horse at the entrance of the village, and had gone through the 
 gardens in order not to meet any one. 
 
 came to surprise you like a poacher," said he. I don't 
 want to see any artists. I came to see you alone." 
 
 He came back several times each year, always in this kind of 
 half-incognito, until his death (in i860), and always talked for hours 
 with Millet of art and artists of his time. He would never go into 
 Millet's house, and never asked him to come and see him at Font- 
 ainebleau. Millet considered him a very original and very clear 
 mind in his judgments of the masters and contemporary art ; but a 
 restless man, doubtful of himself, who, under the rough outside of a 
 cavalry officer, hid a profound weakness, straying into theories about 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 139 
 
 painting and the search for means rather than an end. Execution 
 was his god. Said Millet : I never heard him say one heart-felt 
 word. He had cruel boii-mots, a crushing sarcasm, a very just 
 criticism even about his own pictures. He suffered like a man 
 who is always searching, and losing his way. On the whole, he 
 had a superior mind in a suffering soul." 
 
 In spite of all his efforts, Arthur Stevens had not been able to 
 find a buyer for either The Wood-cutter" or ''The Angelus," and 
 months passed in abstinence. Rousseau and Diaz exerted them- 
 selves to the utmost. The waiting was long and cruel. At last — 
 a memorable day — came Diaz, like the Cid. He had got six 
 hundred francs, and he lent them to Millet. A bad place got 
 over," wrote Millet. 
 
 It was about this time, March, i860, if I remember aright, that 
 Millet signed a contract in which he pledged himself to give to 
 
 M all the pictures and drawings which he could do in three 
 
 years. He was to have a thousand francs a month. He could choose 
 his own subject and size of canvas. The account was to be balanced 
 at the expiration of the time fixed. Here we have Millet sure of 
 twelve thousand francs a year, — and only one purchaser. It was a 
 great relief, and it seemed to him that Peace herself came to dwell 
 in his house. Released from care, free in his invention, he now 
 painted those admirable canvases which will always be the most 
 brilliant examples of his talent, — "The Sheep-shearer," "Woman 
 Feeding her Children," " Shepherd in the Fold, by Moonlight," 
 " Sheep-shearing," etc. Millet worked happily, as if an old dream 
 were coming true. Perhaps it was imprudent to mortgage his 
 
I40 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 liberty, but his whole ambition had been merely to live by his 
 labor, and he now had three years assured to him. He was now at 
 liberty to undertake works of an importance, originality, and force 
 that he could never have carried through if he had been left to 
 himself The year i860 was a time of calm to him, free from little 
 debts and the cares of the household ; his frequent letters are entirely 
 peaceful. " If it were not for my blessed headaches, I should be 
 contented and quite happy." He re-read with pleasure Montaigne, 
 Bernard Palissy, Olivier de Serres, and sent me extracts applicable 
 to art. Our walks were gay; we laughed about bo?is boitrgeois,'' 
 and their comments on pictures. There were moments in which 
 Millet's words on the subject of nature were eloquent almost to 
 inspiration. When I told him that they might be useful to us both, 
 he would write them down hastily and send me the substance. 
 Poussin was always his model. The character of the great Nor- 
 mandy painter, loyal even to severity ; his pictures, all conceived 
 with such exquisite reason ; his letters, in which, perhaps alone of 
 the old artists, he knew how to formulate principles of art, — made 
 Millet love him as a tutelar genius. 
 
 All this work did not prevent him from suffering with the suffer- 
 ings of his friends. One of his letters shows his feeling for any 
 family trouble. We had lost a child. 
 
 " ist July. 
 
 " Dear Sensier : We are most distressed at the news from you, and we 
 pity Mme. Sensier for all she is suffering. We hope for better news, I assure 
 you. Beg her to try not to grieve so much. Your own experience is, in its 
 way, very agonizing, and no one who has not experienced it can imagine 
 anything of the kind. Alas I there is no consolation worth even attempting— 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 141 
 
 where should we look for it ? We can only reflect on the sad state of man 
 who is born of woman, whose short existence is but a tissue of misery. ' Why 
 did I not die in the womb ! ' said Job. Dear Sensier, I must stop, for I am 
 truly very dismal ; but you can not imagine how, when I hear of a profound 
 sorrow, especially one which strikes those whom I most love, it brings to my 
 mind all that I myself have gone through, and presents all my troubles 
 to me at once. Happily other things come to distract me, but I am easily 
 turned again into that current of thought. My wife begs Mme. Sensier not 
 to excite herself with grief We both embrace you, and wish for you with 
 our whole hearts that you should get over your sorrow. Courage ! 
 
 "J.-F. Millet. 
 
 " Ask M. Niel if he knows an old book, printed in French, called 
 Tableau des %dsio7is chrestiennes — at least, this was the title at the head of the 
 pages, for the volume I saw had neither title-page nor end. It was full of 
 legends which used to frighten me when I was a child. It had the opinions 
 of casuists about a lot of things to happen in the other world, etc. Is it a 
 book easy to find ? What are the finest old illustrated Bibles, and what, in 
 his opinion, is the best translation ? * * * " 
 
 Millet wrote to There concerning three of his o^NX\ pictures, then 
 exhibited at Martinet's, and which were very much admired : 
 
 " In the ' Woman Going to Draw Water,' I tried to show that she was 
 not a water-carrier, or even a servant, but a woman going to draw water for 
 the house, for soup, for her husband and children ; that she should not seem 
 to be carrying any greater or less weight than the buckets full; that under the 
 sort of grimace which the weight on her shoulders causes, and the closing of 
 the eyes at the sunlight, one should see a kind of homely goodness. I have 
 avoided (as I always do with horror) anything that can verge on the senti- 
 mental. I wanted her to do her work good-naturedly and simply, without 
 thinking anything about it, — as if it were a part of her daily labor, the habit 
 of her hfe. I wanted to show the coolness of the well, and meant that 
 its antique form should suggest that many before her had come there to 
 draw water. 
 
142 
 
 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 " In the ' Woman Feeding her Children,' I wanted to suggest a nest of 
 birds with their mother giving them food. The man [in the distance] works 
 to feed them all. 
 
 " In the ' Sheep being Sheared,' I tried to express that sort of stupefac- 
 tion which the sheep feel when they are just sheared, and the surprise of those 
 not yet cut at seeing such denuded creatures coming among them. I tried to 
 give to the house a look of rustic comfort, and make one imagine the yard 
 behind it green where the poplars are planted to protect the house ; in fact, I 
 wished the whole thing to look like an old building full of associations. 
 
 " I try not to have things look as if chance had brought them together, 
 but as if they had a necessary bond between them. I want the people 
 I represent to look as if they belonged to their station, and as if their 
 imaginations could not conceive of their ever being anything else. People 
 and things should always be there with an object. I want to put strongly 
 and completely all that is necessary, for I think things weakly said might as 
 well not be said at all, for they are, as it were, deflowered and spoiled — but 
 I profess the greatest horror for uselessness (however brilliant) and filling up. 
 These things can only weaken a picture by distracting the attention toward 
 secondary things. 
 
 " I don't know whether this is worth saying — but here it is. * * * 
 " The children's whooping-cough is a little better. How d'ye do from us 
 all to you all. J.-F. Millet." 
 
 There wrote an article in the Gazette des Beaux Arts " on the 
 exhibition in Brussels, in which he said : 
 
 . " Till now M. Millet has only shown us small figures, though his way of 
 painting is appropriate to great compositions. The ' Woman Sheep-shearing ' 
 is life-size, seen three-quarters in profile. * * * xhis simple sheep-shearer 
 makes us think of the great works of antiquity, and at the same time of the 
 most solid painting and best color of the Venetian school. Greek art and 
 Giorgione — these are the two memories evoked by the original painting of 
 this solitary worker, who will soon be classed among the masters of our time, 
 and who, perhaps, opens a new era in art." 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER, 
 
 His relative rest did not prevent him from occupying himself 
 with the war waged about him in Paris. His keen instinct made him 
 distinguish friends and foes. He was sure that a campaign was 
 opening against him, in spite of Gerome, who said, He is a Jupiter 
 in sabots'' in spite of the best artists — Jules Dupre, Daubigny, Diaz, 
 Delacroix, Barye, Alfred Stevens, Ricard, Daumier, Belly, Ziem, and 
 Rousseau, and many others of the young school, who always stood 
 up for him.* Meryon, who has had such success since with his 
 etchings, had a great opinion of Millet's, and took the trouble to print 
 some proofs in his own press, in order to study their qualities. 
 
 * We have purposely omitted Corot among the partisans of Millet. Corot had person- 
 ally a great liking for him, but he never understood his talent. He saw very little of him, 
 and was not a friend. I spoke to him once of Millet : " A good heart," said he, " but his 
 pictures are to me a new world — I don't know where I am; I am too fond of the old. I see 
 there is great knowledge, style, depth, — but it frightens me. I like my own little music 
 better. And, to tell the truth, I find it very difficult to like new art. It is only lately, and 
 after having been unsympathetic for a great while, that I at last understood Eugene Delacroix, 
 whom I now think a great man." 
 
IX. 
 
 The Salon of 1861 — A Suicide in Bar bison — Peasant Leaning on 
 his Hoe'' — Millet's Confession of Faith. 
 
 ^ I ^HE Salon of 1861 opened at the Champs Elysees, and Millet 
 
 JL was represented by three pictures, " A Woman Feeding her 
 Children," "Waiting," and "The Sheep-shearer," the large picture 
 exhibited the year before at Brussels. I was there the opening day, 
 and I remember that with certain artists it was an enthusiastic suc- 
 cess. Several said to me : " Millet has surpassed himself ; his 
 ' Sheep-shearer ' is great, strong art, such as is no longer painted. 
 It is like the fresco of an old Florentine." A whole battalion of the 
 young painters declared themselves, with the vehemence of youth, as 
 admirers of Millet. A great part of the critics were hostile, and the 
 public passed in silence to stop before the " Phryne " and " Augurs " 
 of Gerome, and the beautiful landscapes of Courbet. 
 
 "Waiting," a page of Millet's filial heart, was especially attacked 
 on all sides, by caricatures, pitiless jokes, and the solemn dictum of 
 high authorities. Yet the picture was beautiful, and spoke a language 
 
 :44 
 
JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET. 
 
 all might understand, — the home of the old parents of Tobit — a real 
 home of poor people, living in the solitude of the country, and the 
 loneliness of their waiting; the sun, the wood, the road, — a painted 
 silence. The two old people are drawn with the wonderful knowledge 
 of Millet — a strong, marked execution. 
 
 It is a beautiful picture, and yet it displeased people. Millet 
 made no answer to the attacks, except in some words to me : 
 
 " To tell the truth, I prefer the way in which M. X. has treated me to 
 having him praise me. His long strings of empty words, his hollow praises, 
 give me the sensation of having been made to eat pomade. I would rather 
 be rid of him with a little venom. If I wore pumps, I might find it made the 
 road rather heavy, but with sabots I think I can get out of the mire." 
 
 But all the critics did not follow this lead. Millet had defenders. 
 Theodore Pelloquet wrote of The Sheep-shearer " : 
 
 " Here is great art, art that raises the mind. It is full of character, 
 firmness, and grandeur ; it reaches the highest style without apparent effort. 
 One can not find the least trace of false tricks of painting ; but instead a real 
 strength, which does not try to display itself; a large way of painting, serious 
 and solid ; a drawing full of energy, easy and graceful, which we can only 
 accuse of an affectation toward suppressing details — an excess, in fact, of 
 austerity. * * * " 
 
 " If I were not firm in my own ideas," said Millet to me, if I 
 had not some friends, — if I were alone, in fact, — I should ask myself 
 if I were not the dupe of my imagination, if I were not a dreamer. I 
 ask you," he added, what can I find good, or serious, for the correc- 
 tion of my faults, in the invectives of my critics ? I look in vain for 
 anything but noise ; not one counsel which I could use. Is this the 
 ofifice of criticism — merely to abuse ? " 
 
146 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 I often ask myself if I am not painting the situation in too som- 
 ber colors. To control myself, I have re-read the notes taken at the 
 time, month by month, from papers and pamphlets, — notes of real 
 events which took place long ago ; and ready as I am to modify the 
 melancholy account, I can only admit the facts. They are a report 
 of a police-court, in which Millet always appears as the accused, — 
 yes, as a criminal, guilty of exciting citizens one against another. 
 Millet felt all the cruelty of these accusations ; his look showed it. 
 It can even be seen in one of his photographs. He had never suc- 
 ceeded in getting one that looked like him, — he was either stiffened 
 by the pose, or had a hard, fixed look, which was always exaggerated. 
 A Httle photograph, made by one of our friends at Barbizon, at last 
 seized the true moment. He is standing, full length, in sabots, his 
 back to a wall, and his head raised straight and proud ; the leg a little 
 forward, like a man who balances himself exactly ; his hat is in his 
 hand, his chest out, his hair thrown back, and his eyes as if fixed 
 on some threatening object. He wears the gray jersey of the 
 country, and might be one of those enthusiastic peasants, victims of 
 our civil wars, who, vanquished, look at death without flinching. This 
 picture is to me Millet's whole life; he was pleased when I said: 
 ''You look like a leader of peasants, who is about to be shot." 
 
 He was taciturn. People tried to know him because he was 
 an eccentric ; they tried to make him talk, and only succeeded in 
 obtaining a few words of cold civility. He was confiding and talk- 
 ative only with his friends ; walking through the forest, which had 
 the power of making him forget his enmities, he was often eloquent 
 to a remarkable degree. He became enthusiastic over the majesty of 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 the woods, the crumbhng of the antediluvian rocks. He had new 
 and original thoughts. He saw man in the past, savage man, living 
 happily under these great branches. Then, as the sun fell, he 
 recalled the folk-legends, and his imagination took color from the 
 fading day. He explained the terrors of the peasant with the 
 clearness of a seer. 
 
 " Do you not hear the witches' Sabbath over there at the end of the Bas- 
 Breau, — the cries of strangling children, and the laugh of convicts ? Yet it is 
 nothing but the song of night birds, and the last cry of the crows. Every- 
 thing frightens when night, the unknown, succeeds light. All legends have a 
 source of truth, and if I had a forest to paint, I would not want to remind 
 people of emeralds, topazes, a box of jewels; but of its greennesses and its 
 darkness, which have such power upon the heart of man. See the breaking 
 of those great rocks, thrown there by the strength of the elements ; a prehis- 
 toric deluge ! It must have been fearful, grinding in its jaws a generation of 
 men, when the great waters were upon the face of the earth, and alone the 
 Spirit of Cxod survived the disaster. The Bible paints it in these words : ' Et 
 Spiritus Dei superabat super aquas. ^ Poussin alone, perhaps, understood this 
 ' end of the world.' " 
 
 For three years Millet worked constantly, subject to the agree- 
 ment of March, i860. Though not free, he was fruitful. At the 
 end of the contract, Millet owed his purchaser 5,762 francs, which 
 he engaged to pay in paintings. 
 
 Though anxious for the future on account of his growing 
 family, at least Millet had not the troubled life of Rousseau, whose 
 house was often a hell. At home. Millet was father and master. 
 And when at night, after the fatigues of the day's work, he saw 
 around him his wife and children, all glad to come and talk to 
 
148 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 him, and tell him the little tales of the village which he enjoyed 
 so much, then he thought of nothing but his brood, — his frog-pond, 
 as he used to call it. 
 
 The year 1862 is the date at which Millet felt himself ripe to 
 accomplish his boldest ventures. After having proceeded with a 
 certain amount of caution hitherto, he then showed to the world a 
 series of unexpected works in a form that no master before him 
 had used. In 1862, he painted ''Winter" and ''The Crows," 
 "Sheep-feeding," "The Wool-carder," "The Stag," "The Birth 
 of the Calf," " The Shepherdess," and the " Man Resting on the 
 Hoe,"* which raised such a hue and cry with nervous critics. If 
 the series of works made during this curious year were brought 
 together, it would be said that their author must have elaborated 
 them in the most quiet spirit. They all are the wholesome, robust 
 offspring of Millet's genius. Yet peace had not come for him. 
 He was destined never to have rest except in that " place of refresh- 
 ment" which he foresaw as the end of all his struggles. In our 
 letters of this time, it will not be surprising to see the name of 
 Rousseau constantly recurring. The friendship which united them 
 is well known, and also the energy which Rousseau displayed to 
 help Millet, and make his talent accepted. Rousseau was a brave 
 and convinced friend, and he had a great share in causing Millet's 
 infrequent gleams of good fortune. 
 
 " Barbizon, 31st Dec, 1861. 
 " Dear Rousseau : Our baby is almost well, but will do nothing but 
 nurse and cry, which does not allow his mother a moment's rest. But our 
 
 * [A heavy hoe such as is used by the peasants. — Trans.] 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 149 
 
 anxiety is over — that is a great thing. I am working tremendously at my 
 " Planters," so you will probably see me arrive soon, and toss everything 
 upside down at your studio. * * * have had a morning of frost, 
 
 of the most extraordinary beauty, which I wont describe. Vallardi writes, 
 demanding his little picture, with loud cries. Tell him I will bring it to Paris, 
 and to be calm. * * * " 
 
 The picture referred to is the " Potato-planters," one of his most 
 beautiful works. A man and woman are seen on a wide plain, at the 
 edge of which a village is lost in the luminous atmosphere ; the man 
 opens the ground, and the woman drops in the seed-potato. A large 
 apple-tree shades a donkey and a child sleeping in the donkey's 
 basket. 
 
 " 4th March, 1862. 
 " We have been horrified at the death of Mme. J. It is dreadful the 
 number of those who fall about us in these days. No matter how much we 
 think ourselves prepared for the ills that flesh is heir to, we are always taken 
 by surprise and disarmed when they come. * * * What weather ! every- 
 thing frozen stiff. I don't know whether anything will survive. Oh, 
 primavcra of the poets — triste ! triste P' 
 
 " 27th March. 
 
 " Verdier brought some thorns for you, some horn-beams, beeches, seed- 
 lings, beam-trees; also some little elms, all twisted, of the right kind. We will 
 plant them when you come. They all have shining trunks, and look like 
 healthy fellows. Laurel? I am not so modest as to dislike laurel. Bring all 
 you wish ; but, if the choice depends on you, let one, at least, be the kind that 
 becomes a tree. I always think of one I knew all my life in the garden at 
 home, which will always be to me the type of a laurel. The trunk was as 
 thick as a man's body, the leaves rather dull than shiny, and their color a 
 beautiful dark green; the kind of laurel of which to make wreaths for 
 Apollo. * * *" 
 
 " 1 2th May. 
 
 " I have just had three days of my famous headaches. I can't get 
 over it. * * * " 
 
JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 " 2ist July. 
 
 " M. and Mme. X. came to spend the day, and were delighted with 
 everything. My ' Man Leaning on the Hoe ' he thought splendid ! If he 
 were the Government, he would gather them all together as a chapter of 
 history. He wished once more that my lot had been cast in happier 
 surroundings, where I could have received more pleasing impressions ; but, 
 as things stood, not a line should be modified, the more as these things 
 were worth doing ; and a great many more flattering things, which would fill 
 a volume. * * * " 
 
 " 3d August. 
 
 " We are anxious to see you installed here. The children are dying to 
 see Mme. Sensier and her little girl. * * * " 
 
 We passed the holidays together in walks and readings. Millet 
 wrote out for me some of his early impressions. On the 25th of 
 October he fell ill with an inexplicable fever. He is in despair. 
 
 Always evil ; when will the good come ? " said he to me. The 
 doctor orders him to stay in his room. Life, life, how hard it is at 
 times ! and how we need our friends and that [pointing to heaven] to 
 bear it." 
 
 November had always been a black month for Millet, the one 
 in which all his misfortunes happened, and this year had in store 
 for him a tragedy, which he shall tell in his own words. It is about 
 a friend of Rousseau, who had been staying there. 
 
 " Barbizon, i8th Nov., 1862. 
 " The wretched Vallardi has killed himself! Yesterday, about eight, 
 Louis Fouche came hastily into my studio, where I had that moment arrived, 
 and said, trembling, that he had just gone into Vallardi's room at Rousseau's, 
 to rub him as usual ; he had called him as he always did, and Vallardi did not 
 answer; then he ])ut his head into the room, and saw him on his bed covered 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 with blood; he had not dared look any more, and had come to tell me. 
 Imagine what a shock it was to me. I ran there instantly with Luniot, whom 
 we met on the way, and we saw the unfortunate fellow drowned in blood and 
 seeming quite dead. 
 
 " How and why had he killed himself? I looked around, and saw on 
 the little table by his bed a pair of scissors covered with blood, with which he 
 must have struck himself. 
 
 " The maire and the doctor from Chailly came quickly, and we opened 
 his shirt to see where he had struck himself, and found seventeen blows in the 
 region of the heart, besides many other around. It is impossible to describe 
 the look of this wretched man, the way in which he had struggled on his bed, 
 which was all disordered, the prints of his hands in blood on the sheets, on 
 the pillow and everywhere, on the curtains of the bed, which he had seized, 
 and which were torn and bloody. I will try to tell you. The gendarmes and 
 the Procureur Imperial came, and Barbizon is completely upset. I wrote 
 immediately to Rousseau, to whom it will be a severe shock. I am so 
 troubled that I will stop. Vallardi killed himself Sunday night. He was 
 not quite cold when we arrived. Yours, 
 
 "J.-F. Millet." 
 
 " Nov. 2oth, Barbizon. 
 
 " I can not get over the frightful impression of death under such dreadful 
 conditions. The wretched fellow did not suffer greatly ; he was only unhappy 
 because he had not enough income. He would not endure poverty. 
 'Poverty!' — why, he had not even seen it in the distance! Unmarried, 
 alone, with a litde fortune, Rousseau, and other friends besides in Paris ! He 
 never knew that fearful thing and all that comes with it. It was the fear of 
 drudgery and suffering which distracted his mind ; he must have been crazy, 
 and therefore we signed a certificate to that effect. The cure exerted himself 
 to the utmost, and obtained from the dean of Melun permission to use the 
 service of the church, which had at first been refused. Our attestation did 
 away with the difficulty. 
 
 " Imagine what would have become of poor Adele [Rousseau's cousin], 
 alone with this corpse, if, as might easily have happened, Tillot and I had been 
 
152 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 absent. We hardly left the spot, and gave the orders we thought necessary. 
 We protected the body. In fact, I think we were of use. I could never 
 finish if I should tell you stories of those who were there and who came. 
 The grotesque is mixed with everything, even with death. * * * 
 really died from fear of dying in poverty ; his friends in Paris told us so. 
 
 " This horrible end is ever before me. Imagine his death-agony. It is 
 easy now to follow the events. Not being able to sleep again that night, he 
 determined to end the thing. He went into the dining-room and took Mm.e. 
 Rousseau's scissors, and, standing beside his bed, he struck himself as often as 
 his strength permitted ; his power exhausted, he fell with his face against the 
 night-table and his knees on the floor, as one could see from the bruises on 
 the nose and knees. The blow overturned the candle, which fortunately went 
 out in falling. Imagine the efforts of the unhappy wretch, feeling about, trying 
 to get up, slipping in the blood, and with infinite difficulty hoisting himself on 
 the bed ! Fancy this terrible struggle in the dark. And if you could have 
 seen how he had struggled on the bed. Indeed, he left fearful traces of his 
 death. Could he have beheld, before killing himself, the hideous scene the 
 dawn would hghten, I think he would have stopped short; it is a perfect 
 miracle that the house did not burn down. The candle had fallen first against 
 the sheets and then had rolled under the curtains, which it touched. And 
 what an accident for Rousseau, for it would have been impossible that, if the 
 fire had broken out, the studio, which is just above, should not have burned 
 too. Think of Rousseau's canvases, sketches, drawings, all on fire — all he 
 had finished and begun, destroyed on his return — a heap of ashes! I am 
 bewildered. Do come Sunday if you can ; I need to be cheered, for I have 
 never experienced anything like this. How heavy is the atmosphere of 
 suicide ! I am surrounded by an endless nightmare. J--F- Millet." 
 
 For many days Vallardi's violent death, and the sight of blood 
 and voluntary self-torture, were a horror from which Millet could not 
 escape. At last, as if in a fever, he fixed the terrible vision in 
 tangible shape. He drew the unhappy suicide on his death-bed. 
 When I saw him, three days later, he showed me the object of which 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 his memory had kept a fearful remembrance — a picture of blood, 
 rage, and despair ; and everywhere the bloody hand-mark on the 
 walls, and even on the window ; horrible, but full of strength 
 and truth. 
 
 " Barbizon, 29th December, 1862. 
 * * YVe were present in spirit at the baptism of your little Jeanne, 
 and we wish for her that she may renounce the devil and all his works in 
 another way than by word, and that she may be a good girl. If that cere- 
 mony were gone through with in sincerity of heart, and not as a form, as is 
 usual, it would be more touching and solemn. 
 
 " I saw M. M , as you announced. Of course 1 knew nothing, but 
 
 as I discovered his secret from some remarks, I recommend you to stop him 
 from spoiling this inclosure, which is most beautiful, and which he proposes 
 to improve and change. First, he wishes to plant pines and other evergreens 
 in the little wood, because in winter he thinks bare trees dismal ! * * * " 
 
 Millet had an antipathy to all embellishments of nature. This 
 little corner afterward inspired one of his most beautiful pictures : 
 "Spring." He was right, therefore, to dread its destruction or pre- 
 tended beautifying. He went so far, in his passion for the liberty of 
 nature, that he would not allow the wildest plants to be hindered in 
 their capricious growths. If it had only depended upon him, he 
 would have let the ivy and honeysuckle penetrate into the very heart 
 of the house. An ivy trimmed or a clematis pruned gave him 
 real pain. 
 
 We have hidden many details of this year of labor and emotions 
 — many a confidence which we keep for our own hearts. We are 
 silent over his most secret sufferings. We only wished to show him 
 at home and let him paint his own portrait. We will return to his 
 public life as an artist. 
 
 20 
 
154 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 His struggles are by no means finished. The Salon / Here we 
 always find Millet torn between the indifference or the stupid surprise 
 of the public, the fury or sympathy of the critics. He had little taste 
 for the official exhibition — a big counter at which all is seen, judged, 
 and sold with the alacrity of a stall in the fish-market ; where many a 
 critic shamelessly praises or blames without any other object than to 
 say something clever or funny. 
 
 But none the less was it for Millet a torture-chamber. He found 
 his pictures out of their element, and lost in a w^orld which did not 
 speak the same language. The new painting only raised a feeling of 
 curiosity in him, and he said to a friend: "I wish I could make artists 
 paint with more meditation, and critics write with less self-sufiiciency. 
 I would like the Salon closed for five years, and at the end of that 
 time each artist be allowed only to send one nude figure, which should 
 have no meaning. You would then see how many clever fellows 
 would withdraw from competition, and how much want of knowledge 
 is our modern disease." 
 
 Understanding well enough what was before him, Millet sent to 
 the Salon of 1863 three pictures, one of which was an audacious 
 venture: "A Peasant Leaning on his Hoe," "A Woman Carding 
 Wool," and "A Shepherd Bringing Home his Sheep." Having 
 received a second-class medal in 1853, could outrage the jury with 
 impunity. The first, he well knew, would never have been hung by 
 them. Apropos of this wretched peasant, whose tragic and sinister 
 figure displeased the delicate and timid, a furious battle raged. Shall 
 I reprint the bitter words ? No. Passions were greatly excited, and 
 even the gentlest, Theophile Gautier, for instance, became ferocious. 
 
\\'oman Carding Wool. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 ^57 
 
 Paul de Saint Victor was not less hot, but Millet was bravely defended 
 by Pelloquet and others, and the battle ended in a sonnet in the 
 Nain Jaune," to Millet and his peasant. 
 
 During the struggle. Millet took refuge in his studio, which 
 looked like a barn, and where for friends he had a couple of casts 
 from the antique, a few dried branches hung against the wall, and 
 the sky, which could be seen through the higher panes of 
 his window. 
 
 In the evening, leaning on the wall of his garden, he gave himself 
 up to long, silent meditation, watching the setting sun flood the woods 
 and plains with its flaming vapors ; then he would go back to his 
 family, strengthened in his belief, and saying to himself: "There lies 
 the truth. Let us fight for it." In one of these moments he wrote a 
 sort of confession of faith to me : 
 
 " The gossip about my ' Man with a Hoe' seemed to me all very strange, 
 and I am obliged to you for letting me know it, as it furnishes me with 
 another opportunity to wonder at the ideas which people attribute to me. In 
 what club have my critics ever met me ? Socialist ? Why, I really might 
 answer, like the Auvergnat couiniissioiiairc : ' They say I'm a Saint-Simonist. 
 It isn't true. I don't know what a " Saint-Simonist " is.' 
 
 " Is it impossible to admit that one can have some sort of an idea in 
 seeing a man devoted to gaining his bread by the sweat of his brow. Some 
 tell me that I deny the charms of the country. I find much more than 
 charms, — I find infinite glories. I see as well as they do the little flowers of 
 which Christ said that Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of 
 these. I see the halos of dandelions, and the sun, also, which spreads out 
 beyond the world its glory in the clouds. But I see as well, in the plain, the 
 steaming horses at work, and in a rocky place a man, all worn out, whose 
 ' ha7i / ' has been heard since morning, and who tries to straighten himself a 
 moment and breathe. The drama is surrounded by beauty. 
 
158 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 " It is not my invention. This ' cry of the ground ' has been heard long 
 ago. My critics are men of taste and education, but I can not put myself in 
 their shoes, and as I have never seen anything but fields since I was born, I 
 try to say as best I can what 1 saw and felt when I was at work. Those who 
 want to do better have, I'm sure, full chance. 
 
 " I stop, for you know how garrulous I become when I begin this subject. 
 But 1 would like to say how flattered I felt by the articles you sent me. If 
 you happen to know the authors, tell them of the pleasure I took in them. 
 * * * J.-F. Millet." 
 
 Soon after this letter, Millet wrote a letter to Pelloquet apropos 
 of articles published in " L'Exposition." Pelloquet had it printed in 
 the Moniteur du Calvados," and I will give it at length. We can 
 see Millet's opinion on art, and the virility of his mind. 
 
 " Barbizon, June 2d, 1863. 
 "Monsieur: I am very much pleased at the manner in which you 
 speak of my pictures at the Exhibition. The pleasure is especially great 
 because of your manner of speaking of art in general. You belong to the 
 very small number of persons who believe (alas for those who do not believe 
 it) that all art is a language, and that a language is made to express thoughts. 
 Say it, and say it over again ! Perhaps it will make some one reflect. If 
 more people believed it, we would not see so much aimless writing and paint- 
 ing. It is called skillful, and those who make a business of it are greatly 
 praised, — but truly, and if, in fact, it is real skill, should it not be employed 
 only to accompHsh good work, and then hide itself modestly behind the work ? 
 Should skill open a shop on its own account? I have read — 1 don't know 
 where — 'Woe to the artist who shows his talent before his work.' It would 
 be very absurd if the wrist took precedence of the brain. I do not remember, 
 word for word, what Poussin says in one of his letters about the trembling of 
 his hand, at a time when his head was in good working order, but this is about 
 the gist of it : And although it (the hand) is weak, yet it must still be the 
 servant of the other, etc. Once more, if more people believed as you do, they 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 159 
 
 would not so resolutely devote themselves to flattering bad taste and evil 
 passions for their own profit and without care for right ; as Montaigne says so 
 well, instead of naturalizing art they artificialize nature. 
 
 " I would be glad of a chance of talking with you, but as that is not 
 possible, at any rate at present, I will try, at the risk of boring you, to tell you 
 some things which are to me matters of faith, and which I would like to 
 express in my work : 
 
 " That things should not look as if they were brought together by acci- 
 dent and for the moment, but that they should have among themselves an 
 innate and necessary connection. I want the people I paint to look as if they 
 were dedicated to their station — that it would be impossible for them to 
 ever think of being anything but what they are. A work should be all of a 
 piece, and people and things should be there for an end. I wish to put 
 strongly and fully all that is necessary, so much so that I think things 
 weakly said had better not be said at all, because they are, in a manner, 
 deflowered and spoiled ; but I profess the greatest horror of uselessness 
 (however brilliant) and filling up. Such things can have no result but to take 
 off" the attention and weaken the whole. 
 
 " It is not so much the objects represented as the desire of the artist to 
 represent them, and this desire creates the degree of power with which he has 
 executed his work. One can say that everything is beautiful in its own time 
 and place, and on the other hand, that nothing is beautiful which comes at 
 the wrong time. 
 
 " Let us have no weakening of character ; let Apollo be Apollo, and 
 Socrates be Socrates. Do not combine the two — they would both lose by it. 
 Which is the handsomer, a straight tree or a crooked tree ? The one that is 
 in its place. I therefore conclude that the beautiful is the suitable. 
 
 " This might be infinitely developed and proved by endless examples. 
 Understand that I do not speak of absolute beauty, for I do not know what it 
 is, and it seems to me only a tremendous joke. I think people who think and 
 talk about it do so because they have no eyes for natural objects ; they are 
 stultified by 'finished art,' and think nature not rich enough to furnish all 
 needs. Good people, they poetize instead of being poets. Characterize ! that 
 is the object. Vasari says that Baccio Bandinelli made a figure to represent 
 
l6o JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 Eve, but getting further in his work, he found that his figure was a Httle thin 
 in the flank for an Eve. He simply gave her the attributes of Ceres, and the 
 Eve became a Ceres. We may admit that, as BandineHi was a clever man, 
 there must have been some bits of superb modeling in the figure, and great 
 knowledge, but nevertheless it had no determined character, and was a most 
 miserable work. It was neither fish nor flesh. 
 
 Excuse me for having spoken at such length, and perhaps to so fittle 
 purpose, and let me add that if you should be wandering in the neighborhood 
 of Barbizon, you would favor me by stopping a moment at my house. 
 
 " J.-F. Millet." 
 
 When the Salon of 1863 closed, Millet felt that vv^ith it had 
 ended a theatrical representation in which he had unwillingly 
 played the part of a too prominent actor. He returned to his 
 drawings — compositions of rustic scenes. " I never can paint all 
 I want to," he said to me. " My life would not be long enough, 
 and I must express, by some quicker and less complicated methods, 
 all the subjects which remain in my mind from my own home, 
 and from the part of the country in which I live. The drawings, 
 indeed, are my only resource. Since picture-lovers despise my 
 paintings, I must try to find for these summary compositions peo- 
 ple who will understand me and who can buy them." 
 
 Some one proposed that he should do some religious pictures 
 which could be photographed for sale. He thereupon drew the 
 FHght into Egypt " twice, full of mystery and rustic kindliness. 
 Saint Joseph was seen carrying the infant Christ in his arms, like 
 a precious treasure ; the black night was only lighted by the halo 
 around the child, — a beautiful thought, which Millet rendered like 
 an early master. He also made a " Christ Rising from the Tomb/' 
 
The Resurrection. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 1 63 
 
 In this drawing, Christ, glorified, springs toward heaven as if shot 
 from a mortar; the guards, bhnded, frightened, throw themselves 
 on the ground, while the God-man, calm and powerful, finishes his 
 earthly role in a dizzying upward flight. The invention was 
 superb and new. 
 
X. 
 
 Illustrations of Theocritus— Interest ifi Delacroix In Japanese Art 
 — -''Shepherds Bringing Home a New-born Calf y 
 
 1\ /FILLET soon abandoned these Biblical compositions, and 
 
 IVJL devoted himself to Theocritus, whose works a young friend, 
 M. Chassaing, had sent him. He found here subjects of country life, 
 and we shall see him criticise sharply the translator for his ignorance 
 of country things. 
 
 The letter is addressed to M. Chassaing : 
 
 " Dear Sir : I have received the two books which you sent me, The- 
 ocritus and Robert Burns, and I am doubly grateful, first, for your kind thought 
 in sending them, and then for the pleasure which the works themselves have 
 given me. 
 
 " I must tell you that I seized first Theocritus, and did not leave it till I 
 had devoured the contents. It has a na'ive charm, peculiarly attractive, which 
 is not to be found in the same degree in Virgil. It is when I take it word 
 for word that I am most delighted; I find things much better there than 
 
 " Barbizon, July 20. 
 
JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET. 
 
 165 
 
 in the translation at the end. Why are not words used to depict, instead of 
 weakening the meaning by an obscure sound, and often a pretentious concise- 
 ness ? If I could talk to you about it, I could doubtless make myself 
 understood. I feel I am making a mistake in starting a question of this kind, 
 but I will nevertheless try to give you a little sample of what I mean. 
 
 " In the first idyl, on the vase upon which all kinds of things are sculp- 
 tured, among others is a vine, full of ripe grapes, which a Httle fellow guards, 
 sitting on a wall ; but on both sides are two foxes ; one surveys the rows, 
 devouring the ripe grapes. Does not ' surveys the rows ' show you the planting 
 of a grape-vine ? Does it not make it real, and can't you see the fox trotting 
 up and down, going from one row to another ? It is a picture, an image ! 
 You are there. But in the translation this living image is so attenuated that it 
 would hardly strike you. ' Two foxes, one gets into the vineyard and devours 
 the grapes.' O translator, it is not enough to understand Greek — you must 
 also know a vineyard to be struck by the accuracy of your poet's image, that it 
 may spur you to the exertion of rendering it well ! And so on with everything. 
 But I come back to that : I can't see the fox trotting in the translator's 
 vineyard. I stop — I have come to the end of my paper. 
 
 " I must tell you that Burns pleases me greatly ; he has thoroughly his 
 own flavor — he smacks of the soil. We will talk about it, I trust. 
 
 " My friend Sensier writes that you have been to see him. He says he 
 will soon have some proofs taken, and that he is only waiting for a solution 
 which you, perhaps, can hurry along. This is what he says. As for myself, I 
 work a great deal, and the reading of Theocritus proves to me that one is 
 never so Greek as in painting naively one's own impressions, no matter where 
 they were received, and Burns proves it also. It makes me wish more ardently 
 than ever to express some of the things of my own home, the home where 
 I lived. 
 
 " Accept again, my dear sir, my thanks, and if it is at all possible, come 
 from time to time and spend a day here. J'-F. Millet." 
 
 " Barbizon, 4th Aug., 1863. 
 " Sir : I am very happy to hear that you are soon coming, and that for 
 a double reason, for I shall have the pleasure of seeing you and at the same 
 
JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 time I can tell you all I have thought of them [the books], for I will be able 
 to say to you in five minutes more than I could write in two hours. I will 
 only say, in general, that it is a great while since I have read anything modern 
 that has such a quality. Even if I were capable of the task, I should not 
 wish to measure him [Mistral] with Homer, Dante, Shakspere, etc., but I am 
 convinced that he belongs to the same family, whatever his stature. We will 
 talk about it — it is worth it; we will talk also about the little volume, ' Au 
 Village,' which you put in with ' Mireio.' I will not say any more, for I would 
 rather talk than write. 
 
 " Believe me that I will be delighted to have you come, and receive my 
 thanks beforehand. J.-F. Millet." 
 
 " Barbizon, 14th Oct., 1863. 
 " The pleasure, M. Chassaing, which you have given me in sending me 
 Shakspere is very great, and a double pleasure — first, because of your wish to 
 please me, which I think a great deal of, and then because it would be impos- 
 sible to have chosen anything better adapted to that end. But, as there is no 
 pleasure without pain, one thing distresses me in all this, and that is the 
 trouble which you give yourself for me. I am overwhelmed and almost 
 ashamed. And to think that this is not all, and that Dante will be added to 
 Shakspere! * * * MiIlet." 
 
 M. Chassaing had been struck with the just and profound 
 reflections which Millet made upon the great classic authors, among 
 others Shakspere and Dante. He sent him translations by Frangois 
 Victor Hugo and by Lamennais. Millet's notes, written on the 
 margin, were certainly those of a profound observer. 
 
 Theocritus pleased Millet greatly. He found pictures painted 
 by the Greek poet which he easily translated into the language of 
 his own art. He divided his time between the compositions inspired 
 by the antique and a certain shepherdess, about whom he spoke to 
 no one, but who had taken possession of his heart and soul — a 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 shepherdess in the fields, fresh and sturdy, yet pensive as a Joan of 
 Arc 'listening to the voices," — one of his most beautiful pictures. 
 We will speak of this shepherdess later. 
 
 But he came back to Theocritus, and had a plan, formed on 
 the advice of M. Chassaing, to publish a first idyl. He was soon 
 stopped by the difficulties of such an undertaking. No publisher 
 would compromise himself by venturing to bring out Theocritus 
 translated by Millet. 
 
 " Barbizon, November 8, 1863. 
 
 a * * * ]y[_ Chassaing thinks that the best thing for the Theocritus 
 would be to offer an idyl to a publisher — an idyl already printed and illus- 
 trated — that he thinks no publisher could resist, and would then be willing to 
 carry on the work. 
 
 " He said he would combine with his friend Rollin for means to get the 
 necessary funds together to accomplish this much. He explained them a little 
 to me, but the devil take me if I remember these things, which I don't even 
 understand while they are being explained to me. He will doubtless write to 
 you, and you can judge whether his idea is practicable. Anyhow, I have 
 begun to scribble some compositions for the first idyl : Thyrsis and a goat-herd 
 seated near Pan's grotto ; Thyrsis playing the syrinx and the other listening. 
 There will be a vase, of which the figures in sculpture will be reproduced ; I 
 will treat them naturally. A beautiful woman, a divine creature, whom two 
 men are quarreling about; an old man fishing with a net in the sea; a child 
 sitting on a wall to watch a grape-vine beside it, but so taken up with 
 braiding a straw cage to catch grasshoppers that he does not see two foxes 
 near by — one filching away his breakfast, the other eating the finest grapes in 
 the vineyard : these are the three subjects of the vase. 
 
 "There remains the death of Daphne, which is the subject which Thyrsis 
 plays upon the syrinx, and at whose death are present Mercury, Venus, 
 Priapus, the goat-herds, and shepherds. Five subjects in all, and I really must 
 do them, all five. All the idyls would not take so many ; some could be 
 expressed with one picture, or two at most." 
 
JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 Millet had often pondered on the subject of decorative art. 
 He loved to look at the gorgeous and facile way in which Rosso, 
 Primaticcio, Freminet, Ambroise Dubois, and all the school of Font- 
 ainebleau covered the great walls and wide ceilings with their 
 paintings. Their science, their splendid ruggedness of expression, 
 attracted him like the powerful fantasies of a race of giants. 
 
 One of us, a friend who understood him, proposed to him to 
 paint four large subjects for a house in the Boulevard Haussmann. 
 These paintings, destined to decorate a fine dining-room, were to 
 be the four seasons. Millet received the order with delight, though 
 still working on his shepherdess. 
 
 " Barbizon, 23d January, 1864. 
 " * * * The picture [the shepherdess] for M. Tesse is finished, but 
 you know what the last days always are; scruples arise, and we try to 
 strengthen the thing — to express it with all our might. * * * Could 
 M. Tesse spare it for another week ? " 
 
 " 27th Jan., 1864. 
 
 " Dear Sensier : I will begin by thanking you for your trouble about 
 my request from M. Tesse, for it could not have been so easy. With an 
 amateur, one can never be sure of a good result. * * * j am glad you 
 were pleased with my two frottes. Advise the gentleman as to the framing — 
 that is, that the half of the picture shall not be covered. It ought not to be 
 covered at all, but strips nailed outside the canvas. * * * 
 
 " I received your hundred francs, for which many thanks. At the same 
 time I got a letter from M. Tesse, containing three hundred francs. The post- 
 woman is struck dumb with admiration. She said, ' Two letters, good ones, 
 and two at a time ! ' The fact is, they are good letters. Tell me all 
 the news." 
 
 "Barbizon, 5th February, 1864. 
 a * # * Qj^g these (^ays I want to tell you some of the pleasures 
 that from time to time I have had in the midst of my sorrows, and to leave 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 you in writing, to the best of my ability, an acknowledgment of all the good 
 you have done me. I want you to know that I know that you have been, if 
 not the only one, certainly my strongest support, and should 'the sheep' 
 ever come over to my side in a flock, 1 could only consider it a causa et 
 vana et falsa'' 
 
 The public exhibition of the works of Delacroix began the i6th 
 of February, 1864. Millet came to Paris to see them, and was deeply 
 moved by them. 
 
 "4th March, 1864. 
 " * * * Could 1, like Lazarus, pick up a few crumbs under the table 
 of your banquet at the Delacroix sale ? I am glad you have the ' Lara it is 
 a very fine thing. The drawing of ' Ovid among the Scythians' was, I think, 
 on the screen in the middle of the room, with the ' Socrates,' the ' Spartan 
 Women,' etc. When I go to Paris I will see your purchases. But try to get 
 me some sketch. Is Burty going to make fac-similes of the album he has 
 bought? It must be very interesting. Who has bought the lithographic 
 stones of the Goetz ? M. Robert ? At last poor Delacroix has given Paris 
 a fever. The phrases you copy from the sketches are very true. * * * " 
 
 He found the means, poor as he was, to pick up fifty sketches, 
 which he studied a long time with admiration. 
 
 The following letter is a little interlude. It points to the 
 introduction of Japanese art in PVance. It may be remembered 
 with what enthusiasm this art was received by the artists. I was 
 the first to bring it to the notice of Rousseau and Millet, who 
 lived like hermits. Rousseau was taken with it as with a fever; 
 he wanted everything himself, and if Millet or I went hunting and 
 discovered some new bit of this strange art, it seemed to him that 
 we had robbed him. 
 
IJO 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 "Barbizon, i6th March, 1864. 
 " Dear Sensier : What plaguey wmd is this that blows on us from 
 Japan ? I, too, came near having a very disagreeable aftair with Rousseau m 
 regard to some pictures which I brought back from Paris. While I wait to 
 hear what happened between you and Rousseau, I want you to believe that 
 no sort of meanness has been done by me toward you. I want all this made 
 plain before my journey, for I should be a most unhappy man all the rest of 
 my life if for one cause or another any cloud should come between us. I have 
 left my work to say this to you. If you have no other news from me before 
 then, come to see me and my picture before it goes. 
 
 J.-F. Millet." 
 
 Millet and Rousseau had an explanation; it was only a lovers' 
 quarrel ; as for me, it was soon over, and I left Rousseau in 
 possession of all he demanded. 
 
 The Salon of 1864 opened on the 1st of May. Millet was 
 represented by two canvases of equal size — a shepherdess with her 
 flock, and peasants bringing home a calf born in the fields. 
 
 We will leave the Shepherdess," whose success was undoubted, 
 and go to the rescue of the poor calf, which was maltreated by the 
 public, the caricaturists, and the roughs of the studios. All the press 
 repeated the same criticism ; it was almost unanimous in reproach- 
 ing Millet with letting his men carry a calf on a litter, as if they 
 were carrying the Host. Millet saw this rustic scene at his home, 
 when he went there on a visit, and drew and painted the whole 
 from nature. The attitude, the carriage, the characters were there- 
 fore all carefully observed ; the bearers even belonged to his own 
 family. The unfortunate calf was literally torn to pieces by the 
 critics. Millet himself undertook to defend it : 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 171 
 
 " Barbizon, loth May, 1864. 
 " My Dear Sensier : Apropos of what Jean Rousseau says about my 
 men, who carry a calf as if it were the sacrament or the bull Apis, — how does 
 he expect them to carry it ? If he admits that they carry well, I don't ask 
 any more for my own satisfaction, and I should say to him : The expression 
 of two men carrying something on a litter depends upon the weight which 
 hangs from their arms. So, if the weight were the same, whether they had the 
 ark of the covenant or a calf, a lump of gold or a stone, the same expression 
 would be the result; and even if they were filled with admiration and rever- 
 ence for what they were carrying, still they would be subject to the law of 
 weight, and their expression could only be that of the weight. If they 
 put it down for a moment and then began again to carry it, the law of 
 weight would remain the same. The more they wish to preserve the 
 object carried, the more careful will be their manner of walking, and they 
 will keep step ; they must, in every case and always, keep step ; if they do not, 
 their fatigue will be more than doubled. And this is the whole secret of all 
 this solemnity so much found fault with. But it is easy enough to see in Paris 
 two commissionaires carrying a bureau on a litter. Any one can see how they 
 keep step. Let M. Jean Rousseau and any of his friends try to do the same 
 and still retain their usual gait ! Don't they know that a false step may make 
 the burden bounce off ? Enough. * * * " 
 
 Thore was almost the only one who took the *'Calf" seriously. 
 His article, published in the " Independence Beige," is a charming 
 description, a peasant scene a la George Sand — but even he 
 admired with some reserve. 
 
 As for the " Shepherdess," things from the first took another 
 tone. Its success was defined immediately by a warm article by 
 M. Castagnary : 
 
 " Let us first salute M, Millet," he cries. " He is a master, and his 
 * Shepherdess ' a masterpiece. To the right and left in the background the plain 
 
1/2 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 stretches far away, and on every side passes beyond the Hmits of the frame. 
 The shepherdess walks along knitting, her flock follow her. * * * if you 
 judge the worth of a work by the depth of feeling which it excites in you, this 
 humble idyl must be considered as one of the most important pictures of the 
 Salon. The great artist has put his whole heart into it, his whole soul. Those 
 who accuse him of willfully exaggerating the ugliness of our peasants will be 
 satisfied this time. The young shepherdess has all the beauty and all the 
 rustic grace compatible with her condition and race. This is an important 
 detail ; but what we must look at specially, and praise without reserve, is the 
 harmony, the intimate union, of all the parts of this beautiful landscape; the 
 sheep are at home on the plain, the shepherdess belongs to them as much as 
 they to her. The earth and sky, the scene and the actors, all answer one 
 another, all hold together — belong together. The unity is so perfect and the 
 impression resulting from it is so true, that the eye does not ask how the thing 
 has been done. The handicraft disappears. The mind is entirely satisfied 
 with the charm of the picture. Is not this the height of art ? " 
 
 For this picture, the Director of the Beaux Arts offered Millet 
 fifteen hundred francs. He had already sold it for two thousand. 
 After the Salon, he received a medal — this was all. 
 
 " Barbizon, June 6th, 1864. 
 
 " My Dear Sensier : Thank you for the number of the ' Figaro ' that 
 you sent. It is really very curious, and, by the way, gives me a desire to meet 
 Jean Rousseau if it could happen naturally. It might be of real use. He does 
 not sufficiently understand that things are of value only according to their 
 fundamental qualities, and he stiU believes that the care with which a thing 
 is done, even if it is aimless, ought to be taken into account. In fact, it 
 would be a good thing to make him understand that things exist only to 
 the extent of the stuff they contain. 
 
 " Think how this may be brought about. I will make a sketch for 
 the ' Autographe ' ; you may tell whoever it concerns. Blanchet brought the 
 canvases. Let us pray Him who gives us intelligence not to desert us, for 
 we need all our powers to bring this task to a fortunate conclusion. * * * " 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 " 15th June. 
 
 My panels are under way, and, as far as I can judge, my compositions 
 don't look so very bad. I am painting them with ordinary oil colors ; I did 
 not like to embark in the Haro paints, especially as the trial I made of them 
 was not exactly what I wanted. I hope in a week the effect of my composi- 
 tions will be decided. I dig at it like a slave, — am entirely absorbed in my 
 work. I work till dark, and then I don't go out at all; but I do not want to 
 rest until I have got the thing well in shape. I must send you the sketch for 
 the ' Autographe. ' J.-F. Millet." 
 
 " 20th July. 
 
 " I live among sick people. My wife suffers horribly with her head ; 
 several of the children are ailing." 
 
 " 13th August. 
 
 I have the news,* and we leave instantly, Rousseau and I, to see you. 
 Courage, if you can." 
 
 " 9th October. 
 
 "* * * I have just had a visit from M. Thomas de Colmar 
 [the proprietor of the house in the Boulevard Haussmann]. At first he 
 seemed pleased on seeing my panels, then more pleased, finally nearly enthu- 
 siastic. When you see Feydeau, find out what is the real state of the case. 
 He told me that curiosity had been greatly excited about the pictures. Some 
 had said : You must be a man of great taste to have dared to ask M. Millet, 
 etc. And he prides himself on the boldness which his taste has given him, for 
 he does not seem to dream that Feydeau has influenced his taste in the least. 
 Well, whatever the source of his content, let us be thankful for it. ' Summer ' 
 especially seemed to move him. * * * " 
 
 " My Dear Sensier : I don't know what to say about your sad condi- 
 tion, except that I am sorry for you. Who can doctor such diseases ? 
 
 "Yours, J.-F. Millet." 
 
 * Sensier had lost a child. Millet made a portrait of the little girl, dead. — M. 
 
1/6 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 " Barbizon, 2ISt Oct., 1864. 
 
 a * * * J certainly want to go back to the exhibition of Delacroix's 
 pictures, to see again what I have already seen and what I have still to see. 
 What you tell me of Couture and the others does not surprise me, though 
 their manner of procedure is infamous.* Those people feel that they have 
 produced nothing worth while; for to have done more or less work which 
 means nothing is not to have produced. There is production only where 
 there is expression. They do as most feeble people do — revenge themselves 
 on those who are better constituted than they. It must be, as you say, that 
 the great mass of the artists are very inert, for otherwise these would not dare 
 to do what they do. * * * 
 
 " Rousseau thinks Delacroix very badly used, and is very indignant. 
 * * * » 
 
 "Barbizon, i8th Nov., 1864. 
 a * * * J have been talking to Rousseau about the reproductions 
 from Giotto, of which you spoke; but I could not say anything for certain, 
 except that they were superb and touching. Where are the originals, and by 
 whom published ? * * * " 
 
 "Barbizon, Dec, 1864. 
 " Tillot and his family have gone to Paris for the winter. Rousseau and 
 his wife have gone at the same time. Rousseau wants to see a doctor about 
 the pains in his back. I must see the perspector, M. Mayeux, who is said to 
 be a very clever man, and M. Andrieu, a pupil of Delacroix, who may tell me 
 some useful things on the subject of large decorative work. I must see the 
 Louvre again, Paul Veronese and the Italian masters, who were so strong in 
 decoration, and Poussin, who also understood it. In fact, I will be a week in 
 Paris, running about and studying; I should like to see again, if possible, 
 
 * Millet's letter mentions three names. We suppress two, who, indeed, are artists 
 little worthy of judging of Delacroix. As to Couture, his antipathy for the painter of the 
 " Crusaders entering Constantinople " is well known. Having already discussed it ver- 
 bally, he wished his disdain to be preserved in black and white. The article published 
 by Couture in the " Revue Liberale " of the 30th March, 1867, will be remembered. 
 The impertinence with which he speaks of "the intelligent desires" and the "unfortunate 
 efforts" of Itpoor Delacroix" goes beyond the limits of ordinary criticism. — M. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 177 
 
 the Chamber of Deputies and Peers, where Delacroix has done some 
 great things. Before putting my hand to the canvas, I want to fill myself 
 with these masters, who are so strong and so learned. I dread the day 
 when I begin work definitely," 
 
 " 28th December. 
 
 <£ # * * y^y gygg g^j-g ygj.y paittful * # * hurts them to write 
 these few lines. * * We wish you all that can be desired for those 
 whom we love well, and we pray Him who orders our lives to keep far from 
 you any such sorrow as vou have experi\nced this year." 
 
Xi. 
 
 Millet's Decorative Paintings — Death of his Sister Emilie 
 — Visit to Vichy. 
 
 HERE the MS. of Alfred Sensier comes to an end.* But there 
 are notes in pencil on the margins of catalogues, bits from 
 newspapers, and, best of all, packages of long letters from Millet, 
 with which we try to continue the story. We shall leave Millet to 
 speak as much as possible. He wTote a great deal, but no one 
 will be surprised to hear that all the letters are not equally inter- 
 esting. They are full of intimate details. He tells of his garden ; 
 like a good neighbor, he also cares for Sensier's, who was working 
 at the Minister's, and seldom came to Barbizon ; always pursued 
 by notes falhng due, he writes about selling his drawings, and in 
 the midst of these annoyances one of his children falls ill, and he 
 tells his anguish, and his joy when little Charles is saved. In the 
 
 * [Owing to the death of Sensier, in 1877, M. Paul Mantz takes up and concludes 
 the narrative. — Trans.] 
 
 178 
 
JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET. 
 
 first letters of 1865, he tells in detail the sufferings of Rousseau, 
 whose health became more and more precarious ; as for himself, 
 he has his usual headaches and discomforts. Yet he works on 
 without stopping ; he finishes the decorative pictures for M. Thomas, 
 and speaks often of them, and of the difficulty of painting the 
 ceiling in such a cramped studio. 
 
 " Barbizon, 26th January, 1865. 
 
 " My Dear Sensier : It really seems very difficult to get permission to 
 see the pictures at Fontainebleau. * * * If it is absolutely necessary to 
 specify which pictures I want to see, it would be the 'Salle Henri II.' and the 
 chapel where are the paintings of Martin Freminet. * * * i should like 
 to have seen the ' Antonella da Messina ' of which you speak, and the other 
 early Italians, and the Claude Lorraine and the old Greek things, which are 
 not to be despised.! * * * 
 
 " My wife is not so well. She is suffering more. We will soon go to 
 Paris. I have just answered M. Chassaing, who offered his services to us in 
 the most devoted way, in case she should have to go to Vichy. He is full of 
 kindness and goodness of heart." 
 
 " Barbizon, 30th January. 
 " The weather is dark and rainy, the sky cloudy and low, but you know 
 I like it better -than the sunlight. All is in a rich and melancholy color which 
 leaves my eyes quiet and my head calm. * * * Fontainebleau I saw- 
 again Rosso and Primaticcio. They are strong fellows. They are of the 
 decadence, it is true — the fixings of their figures are often absurd and in 
 doubtful taste, but what a strength of conception! And how strongly this 
 rude bonhomie reminds one of a primitive age ! It is as child-like as a fairy 
 tale and as real as the bonhomie of old times. In their art there is a reminis- 
 cence of Lancelot and Amadis de Gaul, and the germ of Ariosto, Tasso, and 
 Perrault. One could spend hours before those good-natured giants." 
 
 t The sale of the collection of the Cte. de Pourtales. 
 
i8o 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 " Barbizon, 29th March, 1865. 
 " My Dear Sensier : I am glad you have the articles on the Salon to 
 do. Believe me, I will do all I can to tell you everything I can think of, either 
 about art in general or particular things in this connection. * * * it 
 seems to me you might show — going back somewhat — that art began to 
 decline from the moment the artist did not lean directly and naively upon 
 impressions made by nature ; that cleverness naturally and rapidly took the 
 place of nature, and decadence then began. Strength departs without con- 
 stant relation with nature, and as example the fable of Antaeus could be used, 
 whose powers diminished when his foot did not toucli the ground, and, on the 
 contrary, took new vigor every time he touched it. * * * Show that, 
 for the same reason, — the abandoning of nature, — art becomes more and more 
 weakened. Give as many examples as possible. Once again, I am sorry we 
 can not talk it over. I send * * some extracts in which you can find some 
 good quotations, or else take the substance of them, — Montaigne, Palissy, 
 Piccolpassi, and his translator, Claudius Popelyn. I will try to find others. 
 I will ruminate upon it, and say as best I can what comes into my head. At 
 the bottom it always comes to this: a man must be touched himself in order 
 to touch others, and all that is done from theory, however clever, can never 
 attain this end, for it is impossible that it should have the breath of life. Quote 
 the expression of Saint Paul, '•Aes sonans et cy tubal um tmnieiis.' * * * " 
 
 " 7th April, 1865. 
 
 " My Dear Feuardent : You are at last off for Italy ! If you find 
 photographs, either from the antique, especially those less known here, or 
 from the painters, from Cimabue to Michael Angelo inclusive, things at not too 
 high a price, buy them, and we will arrange here to relieve you of them. 
 Each place through which you go has its peculiar attractions ; see them well. 
 For the old masters, be sure to get only those done directly from the originals, 
 and not from engravings. Do not take anything of Raphael ; he is to be 
 found in Paris. Find out carefully at Naples whether the paintings in Hercu- 
 laneum and Pompeii have been reproduced. In fact, bring whatever you find, 
 figures and animals. Diaz's son, the one who died, brought some very 
 good ones, sheep among other things. Of figures, take of course those that 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 1 83 
 
 smack least of the Academy and the model, — in fact, all that is good, ancient 
 or modern, licit or illicit. Enough. Send us your little brats. Another idea 
 that strikes me: if you find some books with pictures, — old books, — get them 
 if you can." 
 
 " loth April, 1865. 
 "Dear Sensier: * * * j can't remember what Michael Angelo 
 says about academies. I have no ' Vasari looking over the book you would 
 find some excellent things. Look at a book that Rousseau has, ' Le Moyen 
 Age et la Renaissance,' the article (I think) on the history of French art. 
 * * * See Letourneur's preface for his translation of Shakspere. I think 
 he says some pretty good things about what makes the real superiority of 
 creative men over those who are only learned and practice well their profes- 
 sion. Rousseau has his work. You could enlarge on all this, and show the 
 gulf between what is reasoned and what is felt." 
 
 " Barbizon, 2 2d August, 1865. 
 
 " My Dear Sensier: We went with Rousseau to see Corot and 
 Commairas. We had the kindest possible reception, and our day was very 
 agreeable. We dined at De Knyff's, where we were entertained like princes, 
 as Diaz says. As for the table service, Alfred Feydeau is nowhere. Each dish 
 a new course. Splendid wines, etc. I must confess that I was more embar- 
 rassed than delighted with this kind of dinner, and more than once watched 
 those who were served before me out of the corners of my eyes, to see what 
 they did with their food. Corot's pictures are beautiful, but show nothing new. 
 
 " We are pretty well. I have almost finished my ceiling. * * * " 
 
 The four scenes which he had painted for M. Thomas repre- 
 sented the four seasons. Spring and Summer, eight feet by four, 
 were set into the wood-work, Autumn in the ceiling. Winter, a little 
 smaller than the two others, was fixed in the chimney-piece. 
 
 Millet had thought, in undertaking a piece of work new 
 to him, that it would be prudent to see once more the Italian 
 
JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 work of the decadence which was to be found at Fontainebleau. 
 But he made Httle use of their extravagant lessons. If he dressed 
 his figures in a vaguely antique fashion, he kept his own rusticity 
 and his own special poetry ; except in the matter of costume, the 
 pictures were large Millets. Spring was Daphnis and Chloe, 
 w4io, in a landscape with a statue of Pan, are feeding some 
 birds ; a reaper bronzed by the sun, a sort of familiar Ceres 
 holding a sickle, was Summer walking through the yellow grain ; 
 Autumn a Bacchanal ; and Winter represented Anacreon's L' Amour 
 Mouille." 
 
 When they were put in their places, Sensier wrote about them. 
 When, in 1875, they came to be sold at the Hotel Drouot, they pro- 
 voked much discussion and a little disappointment. Let us say, 
 frankly, that in life-sized figures Millet was not at his ease.* The old 
 symbolism had stood in his way, and the painter touched by rustic 
 scenes had not the showy virtues of a decorator. 
 
 [* We are told by Mr. Wyatt Eaton, who had heard much of these decorations, and who 
 finally had the opportunity to study them carefully during their brief exhibition at Hotel 
 Drouot, that " the disappointment felt by himself and others, deeply interested in Millet's art, 
 was that of not being able to see the decorations in the places for which they were designed. 
 The work itself was another proof of Millet's comprehensiveness and power. Although not 
 painted in the usual manner of large decoration, the effect of the panels in the room where 
 they had belonged must have been complete and surpassingly fine. But, to judge them in 
 the strong light of the picture-gallery, and without the requisite distance, was to ignore Mil- 
 let's intuition and accomplishment." We do not understand the statement by M. Mantz, that 
 in life-sized figures Millet was not at his ease, Sensier's description of the large " Sheep- 
 shearer " has already been given. He and other critics write of the work as one of the 
 masterpieces of painting ; the figures in this picture are three-quarters length and life-size. 
 " The Young Shepherdess " was one of the most admired paintings in the posthumous collec- 
 tion ; this figure is full length and life-size. The large " Sheep-shearer " is owned in Boston, 
 and " The Young Shepherdess " has been for some time on exhibition the Museum of 
 Fine Arts in Boston.— Trans. ] 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 185 
 
 " Barbizon, 28th December, 1865. 
 " My Dear M. Gavet : We have fog efifects perfectly superb, and the 
 most fairy-like frost, beyond any imagination. The forest was wonderfully 
 beautiful, but I am not sure that the most modest things — the bushes and the 
 briars, tufts of grass, and, in fine, all the little sprays of every kind — were not, 
 in proportion, the most beautiful of all. It seems as if Nature wished to give 
 them their chance to retaliate and show that they are inferior to nothing — 
 poor down-trodden things." 
 
 In 1865, Millet began a series of drawings for the architect M. 
 Gavet, to whom the above is addressed. This lasted several years, 
 as M. Gavet was an insatiable lover of his work, and Millet had 
 amassed so many notes that his memory could not be exhausted. He 
 used crayon, pastel, water-colors, and seemed at ease in every mode 
 of expression. Some of his drawings are equal to his best paintings. 
 When, in 1875, the collection of M. Gavet was exhibited, even those 
 who thought they knew Millet were surprised at the variety and 
 grandeur of his work. 
 
 "Barbizon, Jan. 3d, 1866, 
 " Dear Sensier ; * * * i am working on my ' End of the Village 
 [of Greville] Opening on the Sea.' I think my old elm begins to look gnawed 
 by the wind's tooth. What would I give to bathe it in space as I see it 
 in my memory ! O aerial spaces which made me dream when I was a 
 child, will I never be allowed even to suggest you ? * * * Your laurel- 
 tree is bound in straw agiiinst the frost. Tillot must have told you about it,— 
 the frost, — but nothing can give you an idea of it. To speak of the ' Arabian 
 Nights ' would be commonplace and petty. These things are part of the 
 treasures of the snow, which the book of Job speaks of." 
 
 A month later he went to Greville, his sister Emilie being at 
 
 death's door. 
 24 
 
i86 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 " Greville (Hameau le Fevre), 6th Feb., 1866. 
 
 <« * * # When I arrived, my brother Jean- Louis said, ' She no longer 
 knows any one.' I approached her bed and called her, naming my own 
 name. She remained some time apparently hearing nothing. At last she 
 opened her eyes a little, with an expression of surprise ; I spoke my name 
 again, and then thrills ran over her poor face, worn and burned by the fever; 
 then her eyes filled with tears, abundant tears — enough to wet her cheeks. 
 She took my hand with hers convulsively, and said, with as much strength as 
 she could gather, ' Fran9ois ! ' Poor, dear girl ! her heart was still alive and 
 loving enough to pass through its pitiful garment of flesh and show itself to 
 me. Imagine, my dear Sensier, the effect upon me. * * * 
 
 " My old elm is blown down. Everything passes away — and we, too." 
 
 On the iith his sister died. 
 
 About this time the doctors sent Mme. Millet to Vichy. He 
 writes to M. Gavet: 
 
 "Vichy, 17th June, 1866. 
 a * * * J have not had much to do with the people at the baths, 
 but I have made acquaintance with the environs of Vichy, where I find 
 some pretty things. I make as many sketches as possible. * * * In 
 many ways the country has points of resemblance with Normandy, — green 
 fields, surrounded by hedges. As there are many water-courses, there are 
 many mills. The women watch the cows, spinning on a spindle, — a thing I 
 was not familiar with, and which I propose to use a great deal. It is not in 
 the least the shepherdess with her distaff of the pastorals of the last century. 
 It has nothing to do with Florian, I assure you. * * * The little carts of 
 the peasants are drawn by cows. The wagons which they use for bringing 
 home the hay have four wheels, and are drawn by oxen or cows. * * * 
 
 "J.-F. Millet." 
 
 The 26th of June, he tells Sensier that he has made fifty 
 sketches and water-colors. He adds : 
 
 "The country, on the whole, is a Httle like many parts of Normandy. 
 The country people are much more peasants than at Barbizon \ they have that 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 187 
 
 good, stupid kind of awkwardness which does not remind one in the least of 
 the neighborhood of fashionable baths. The women in general have phizes 
 which express the very opposite of spitefulness or unkindness, and which 
 would answer as the type of faces in Gothic art. This race can not be 
 unkind. They speak to you when they meet you. The other day I began a 
 sketch near a house ; I had not been at it long before a man came out with a 
 chair. He did not wish me to stand, so near his home." 
 
 From Vichy he made a rapid excursion into Auvergne, where 
 M. Chassaing awaited him. He saw Clermont, Issoire, and the 
 mountains. The voyage only lasted a few days. The 19th of 
 July he was again in Barbizon, writing to the friend who had 
 shown him the Mont Dore and its splendors : 
 
 a * # * jyjy head is full of all we saw together in Auvergne. Every- 
 thing dances together in my brain; calcined ground, sharp rocks, splits, 
 barrenness, and greeneries ; the glory of God dwelling upon the heights, 
 and other heights veiled in darkness. I hope all these things will finally 
 arrange themselves and go each into its own pigeon-hole." 
 
 Millet became more and more a landscapist, and his letters 
 accord with his works. He writes to Sensier : 
 
 " One must admit that the things one sees out-of-doors in this dull 
 weather are very touching, and are a great compensation for the little time 
 one has to work. I would not be deprived of it for anything, and if it were 
 proposed to me to |ake me to the south for the winter, I should totally refuse. 
 O sadness of field and wood ! I should miss too much in not seeing you ! " 
 
XII. 
 
 The Universal Exhibition of 1867 — Death of Rousseau— Millet 
 made CJievalier of the Legion of Honor — ■ Visits Switzerland 
 with Sensier — The War with Germany — Millet at Cherbourg — 
 He Revisits his Birthplace, with Sensier. 
 
 THE Universal Exhibition was in preparation, and the artists 
 could send any works produced since the year 1855. Millet's 
 friends had some trouble in bringing together his scattered pictures ; 
 he himself could never have surmounted the difficulties. The annual 
 Salon opened at the same time, and Millet sent a landscape. 
 Winter," and another picture, "The Goose-girl." 
 
 " Barbizon, 26th March, 1867. 
 " My Dear Sensier : What you say in your last letter about my ^ 
 pictures at the Universal Exposition, the opinion of Md:ssonier and others, 
 all gives me great pleasure. As to the cross, I assure you I do not flatter 
 myself, and I do not imagine that I will get it. Besides there are plenty of 
 people more anxious than I, who roll logs more persistently than I am willing 
 to do. I only desire this : To live by my work and bring up my children 
 decently, and give expression to the greatest possible number of my impres- 
 
 188 
 
JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET. 
 
 sions. Also, at the same time, to have the sympathy of the people I love. 
 If all this were secured to me, I should think myself fortunate." 
 
 " April ist, 1867. 
 
 " My Dear Sensier : To-day is the opening of the Exhibition, if the 
 programme remains unchanged. I am not without anxiety, I assure you, in 
 thinking of it. It is a serious question for me and for others. * * * " 
 
 Millet was wrong to be alarmed. His exhibition made an 
 impressive appearance — it was typical work of varied and strong 
 character. The pictures were ''Death and the Wood-cutter" (refused 
 in 1859), "The Gleaners," "The Shepherdess with her Flock," the 
 large "Sheep-shearer," "The Shepherd," "The Sheep-fold," "The 
 Potato-planters," "The Potato-harvest," and, finally, "The Angelus." 
 He had chosen well, but he felt anxious, as was natural with one 
 who had not always been well received. 
 
 Theophile Silvestre, after some hesitation, declared himself for 
 Millet, and in his new zeal almost thought he had invented him, but 
 he scarcely knew the painter or the man. He asked Sensier 
 for notes. 
 
 " Barbizon, 23d April, 1867. 
 " My Dear Sensier : * * * i entirely rely upon what you may have 
 said to M. Silvestre, and since I must give my opinion, you have done well to 
 dwell upon the rustic side, for, to tell the truth, if that side is not marked in 
 what I have done, I have done nothing. I reject with my whole soul the 
 democratic side, as it is understood by the clubs, and which some have 
 desired to attribute to me. I only have wished people to think of the man 
 who gains his bread by the sweat of his brow. Let that be said, for I have 
 never dreamed of being a pleader in any cause. I am a peasant — a peasant. 
 As to explaining my way of painting, that would be rather difficult, for I have 
 not taken much heed of it." 
 
JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 " 30th April. 
 
 " Dear Sensier : You may believe that I am well pleased to get a first 
 medal. Rousseau wrote to me about it. * * * With some exceptions, 
 Silvestre's description of my pictures is pretty good, but too much inclined to 
 his peculiar views. I attempted, timidly and discreetly, to hint some things in 
 the sense in which I should better like to see them understood, but when it is 
 so directly a question of one's self, one seems to be making a fuss. His 
 peasant is a little the peasant which Proudhon saw. A detail of no impor- 
 tance to the public, and which has none, perhaps, except in my personal tastes, 
 is that in the ' Potato-planters ' he sa\\' a piece of old sheep-skin in the sabots. 
 If I wanted anything there it would have been straw. In my part of the 
 country, a man who would put sheep-skin in his sabots or on them would have 
 been an object of derision. I passed over this little detail, as I did not dare 
 make any more corrections. It is true he only read me his notes." 
 
 Winter " at the Salon was considerably praised. Theodore 
 Pelloquet wrote of it : 
 
 u # # * What a melancholy impression, full of poetry and reality, 
 this painting makes upon the attentive and sympathetic spectator! It is not 
 at first attractive, and we must look more than once to understand and 
 admire it. Those who are charmed by the brilliant puerilities of clever and 
 rapid handhng are more or less indifferent to the execution, so simple, so 
 naive, yet so intelligent, of this master, and his profound sentiment for nature, 
 and are more or less insensible to the quality of his powerful and true color." 
 
 When this article appeared, Millet had gone to Vichy again with 
 his wife. 
 
 " Vichy, 26th June. 
 
 " My Dear Rousseau : Here we are again, making the acquaintance 
 of the gay world of Vichy. I put off from day to day telling you, fearing you 
 might be humiliated — you who are only in Paris! 
 
 " The day after we parted, I went to see your exhibition. I must tell 
 you now that, although I knew your Auvergne studies and those preceding 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 191 
 
 them, I was again struck, in seeing them together, by the fact that a power is 
 a power, from its very beginning. From the very first, you show a freshness 
 of eye which leaves no doubt as to the pleasure you have in nature ; one can 
 see that she spoke directly to you, and that you saw by your own eyes. 
 It yours and not some other's^ as Montaigne says. I am not going to follow 
 your steps, picture by picture, down to the present. I only want to speak of 
 the departure, which is the important point, for it shows that a man is of the 
 true breed. You were, from the beginning, the little oak, which was destined 
 to become the great oak. * * * 
 
 "Yours, J.-F. Millet." 
 
 While absent at Vichy, Millet could not realize the gravity- 
 still, in fact, uncertain — of the disease with which his friend was 
 stricken [softening of the brain] ; but when he returned to Barbizon, 
 in the beginning of July, he could himself observe the alarming 
 symptoms. The doctors understood, but were silent. Indeed, it was 
 difficult to believe that Rousseau, apparently so robust, would so 
 suddenly decline and die. 
 
 " 1 2th August, 1867. 
 
 " Dear Sensier : Rousseau continues better, though yesterday he was 
 not very well. To-day he is better. The doctor seemed encouraged. I 
 hope for his recovery, though perhaps it may be very slow. 
 
 " Alfred Stevens came this morning, with Puvis de Chavannes, to tell 
 Rousseau that he is elected officer [of the Legion of Honor]. We received 
 them — my wife and I — on the stairs, begging them not to go up, lest his 
 quiet should be disturbed. I told him, and he seemed very much pleased." 
 
 "Barbizon, 2 2d December, 1867. 
 " My Dear Sensier : I am trembling and overwhelmed. Our poor 
 Rousseau died this morning, at nine o'clock. His death-struggle was very 
 painful. He often tried to speak, but his words were stifled by the rattle in 
 his throat. Let those know whom you think should be told. Tillot 
 telegraphed to Besan9on. I write to Silvestre at the same time. " 
 
192 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 After Rousseau's death, Millet took charge of the tomb to be 
 erected to him of rocks and trees taken from the forest of Fontaine- 
 bleau. He also helped Sensier to go through his papers and art 
 treasures, and, lastly, took care of the unhappy wife whom Rousseau 
 had left behind with an incurable malady. Millet's headaches were 
 very severe, and his health seemed broken. But he had a new client, 
 M. Frederic Hartmann, for whom he began several paintings. 
 Unfortunately, he seems to have often been interrupted in his 
 work, and died without having finished the promised pictures. 
 
 He had to go again to Vichy, and seems to have gained very 
 little from this visit He was too unwell to work ; he only made a 
 few excursions and drawings. 
 
 He sent nothing to the Salon [of 1868] ; but the Administration 
 remembered the absent, and at the distribution of rewards on August 
 13th, Millet was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. The 
 Government, never famous for promptness, had taken seventeen years 
 to find out that Millet was a master. The men of the time had but a 
 lukewarm taste for the works of the rustic painter. At last they had 
 to yield, and, after long hesitation, decided to give him a ribbon. 
 Those who were present in the grand salon of the Louvre at the 
 distribution of medals, will remember that Marshal Vaillant, Minister 
 of Fine Arts, who presided at the ceremony, obtained so unexpected 
 a success that he became speechless. He was far from expecting the 
 outburst which he was to produce. The name of Millet had hardly 
 been spoken when the applause broke out, so vigorous, so energetic, 
 so sincere, that the venerable council and its president were troubled. 
 The Administration had chosen well, without wishing it and without 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 1 93 
 
 knowing it And at the confusion of these distributers of rewards, 
 who for once, and almost against their will, represented justice and 
 public sentiment, the applause redoubled. Millet's success was 
 tremendous. 
 
 Whether or not Millet felt pride from this fete, or rather this 
 revenge, we do not know — there are no letters. But everything 
 leads us to believe that he accepted his triumph with the calm 
 modesty of a philosopher, and worked on in silence. In September, 
 he and Sensier made a charming journey. They went to see M. 
 Hartmann, at Munster, and saw a corner of Alsace. From Munster 
 they went into Switzerland, for six or seven days. They first went 
 to Bale. We saw the museum and the cathedral," Millet says, on 
 the back of a letter to his wife. So the painter of ''The Sheep- 
 shearer" saw the moving masterpieces of Hans Holbein. He did 
 not tell his impressions. The travelers were very much hurried. 
 They saw in the rain and fog Lucerne and its famous lake, Berne, 
 and Zurich. ''I want to get back to Barbizon," Millet writes ; and 
 in a letter the next day : My homesickness continues." 
 
 We now find him at work on an illustration for a sonnet, to be 
 published in a curious book called ''Sonnets and Etchings." There 
 were to be only 350 examples, and the plates were to be destroyed. 
 Millet refused to understand how, when a plate has been etched by an 
 artist, it can enter the mind of any one to spoil the plate in order to 
 prove to purchasers that no more proofs can be printed. Already 
 forty-one etchers, among others Jules Jacquemart, Corot, Seymour 
 Haden, Daubigny, Bracquemond, and Ribot, had consented to have 
 their plates destroyed. There remained one only who was stubborn. 
 
 25 
 
194 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 Millet was too much of a barbarian to understand how the height of 
 civilization should consist in destroying a work of art. But he had 
 to yield, for he could not be a solitary exception. 
 
 " Barbizon, 24th Jan., 1869. 
 « * * * J have consented to the destruction of my plate, in spite 
 of my desire to keep it. Between ourselves, I consider this destruction of 
 plates the most brutal and barbarous of proceedings. I am not strong 
 enough on commercial questions to understand the use of it, but I know that 
 if Rembrandt and Ostade had each made one of these plates, they would 
 have been annihilated." 
 
 " Barbizon, 1 6th Feb., 1869. 
 «* * * ^j^g terrible death of poor Mme. Rousseau fills us with 
 distress. It stirs up many things in the past. The poor thing has been 
 hardly used by events. I can't think, without emotion, that she used to take 
 care of me at times when I was ill. * * * God knows, I remember 
 all the good she has ever done me. I pray for the peace of her poor soul." 
 
 " Barbizon, 25th February, 1869. 
 " My Dear Sensier : I find the album you sent me very rich and 
 splendid in the arrangement of colors; but that is almost all that pleases 
 me in it. I do not find the natural and the human, which are generally at 
 the bottom of Japanese art. To me these things are rather a mere matter 
 of curiosity, and for the price that they would cost, I would rather have 
 other Japanese drawings, more natural (if any turn up), or some wood- 
 engravings of the fifteenth century. * * * " 
 
 Sensier wrote, about this time, a series of articles on Rousseau, 
 afterward published under the title Souvenirs sur Theodore 
 Rousseau," and many letters of this date touch upon conversations 
 between the friends. Thore was a devoted partisan of Rousseau, 
 and Sensier asked Millet to give him some notes of their conver- 
 
Shepherdess Knitting. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 197 
 
 sations ; the following letter is a reply to his request. It will seem 
 very singular, and makes us doubt Millet's capacity as a portraitist. 
 It is scarcely a crime to refuse to call Memling by a name he never 
 bore, or to notice that Rembrandt's ''Anatomy Lesson" is differently 
 executed from the "Cloth-merchants," or to think that the verifica- 
 tion of dates is of great use ; but Thore never said that subject was 
 all, and he even wrote the contrary : for instance, that a fine drunkard 
 of Van Ostade was worth an army of ill-painted Spartans. We feel 
 tempted to think that Millet's recollection served him ill — that in 
 the excitement of battle, where all talked at once, opinions were 
 confused and exaggerated. 
 
 " Barbizon, Feb. ist, 1870. 
 
 " My Dear Sensier : I can scarcely condense into a few words our 
 conversations with Thore. I shall tell you much more than you ask, and if 
 you find anything of use in the heap, pick it out. 
 
 "Thore, whom I had never met before, seemed to me a clever catalogue- 
 maker, rather than a man touched by the meaning of a work of art, even 
 with regard to Rembrandt, who was especially " his man." He spoke of a 
 picture as painted in such a year, painted thick or thin; how certain masters 
 signed up to such a date, etc. ; that Hemling was now called Memling, an 
 important discovery of X . 
 
 " Rousseau whispered to me : ' It is no longer Thore ; the sava?its have 
 spoiled him.' Rousseau was irritated that Thore, in looking at his pictures, 
 said, ' Ah ! this one is painted like such a one of Rembrandt,' and explained 
 its manner, etc., etc. Rousseau thought his pictures might have excited some 
 other remarks. To finish, we had a lively discussion on Thore's belief that 
 the subject was of great moment in the elevation of a work of art. Rousseau 
 and I were against him. I let Rousseau speak, as I did not know Thore, 
 but I found myself caught in the net. I tried to show Thore that I thought 
 grandeur was in the thought itself, and that everything became great that was 
 employed in a great cause. 
 
198 
 
 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 " A prophet comes to threaten a population with a plague and fearful 
 devastation, and this is what the God who sends him says by his mouth; 
 I will send you grasshoppers and locusts — my great army, etc. And the 
 prophet makes such a description of their devastation that never has a greater 
 desolation been imagined. I asked him whether the threat would have been 
 more terrible if, instead of locusts, the prophet had spoken of some king with 
 his chariots and war-horses ; for the devastation is so great that nothing is 
 untouched. The earth is denuded! Lament, husbandman, for the harvest 
 of the field has perished ! The wild asses and all creatures cry out, for there 
 is no more grass. The object is accomplished and the imagination aroused. 
 
 " I do not know whether he was convinced by whatever truth there was 
 in this, but he seemed appeased. You saw him on his return to Paris. I 
 always thought he left here a little piqued."* 
 
 On the 24th of March, 1870, the painters w^ere called together 
 to vote for the jury of the coming Exposition, and of eighteen jurors 
 Millet w^as the sixth elected. It was a sort of tardy consecration ; 
 the suffrage of the artists raised him to be a judge whose works had 
 been refused, not only in his youthful beginning, but as late as 1 859, 
 when he painted " Death and the Wood-cutter." He sent two 
 pictures, " November," a landscape, and " Woman Churning," a 
 favorite theme which he often varied in repeating. The Knitting- 
 lesson," exhibited earlier in the season, was more favorably noticed, 
 and the Spinning- woman," of rather uncertain date, is a picture 
 which reminds us in execution of Terburg and some of the masters 
 of his school. It is in place to remark here that during this period 
 of his life Millet, who never sought to pass for a colorist, was much 
 
 * [In his life of Rousseau, after giving part of this letter, Sensier quotes Thore as 
 saying, " Do you know that they are terrible, Millet and Rousseau. They are like rocks ; 
 their ideas are immovable. They are there just like two fakirs, and nothing can make them 
 modify one of their opinions." He had been absent twelve years and found himself, as he 
 said, a ghost coming among them again. — Trans.] 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 1 99 
 
 occupied in the harmony of tones, and often tried to strike the 
 brilHant or the intense note of color. The catalogue of the sale at the 
 Hotel Drouot, after the artist's death, gives 1867- 1869 to his ''Pig- 
 killers." The motive is not heroic- — it is taken without shame from 
 the realities, one may say the cruelties, of peasant life. It is not a 
 picture for a boudoir, but it is an energetic and robust painting, in 
 v/hich truth is not veiled. The work has strength from the quality 
 of its tone; if we are not mistaken, Millet found occasion to intro- 
 duce some very fine reds. It is a color which he never abused. 
 He always preferred dim tints and softened notes of color. He loved 
 delicate harmonies, freshness, and daintiness. In drawing his pastels 
 he had renewed what has been called his flowery manner, and though 
 he was not, like Delacroix, an absolute colorist, a scientific colorist, 
 he often made happy hits in his choice of tones. 
 
 But questions of art were to be long veiled in the smoke of 
 battle. The enemy approached. Sensier was sent to Tours and then 
 to Bordeaux. Millet left Barbizon, where work, as well as the 
 macerial support of the family, would have been impossible, and the 
 uniforms of the Uhlans would soon make unpleasant spots in the 
 quiet landscape. It is useless to say that he worked but little. 
 Calmness of spirit was lacking to him, as to us all — the time of 
 eclogues had passed. 
 
 " Cherbourg, 22d September, 1870. 
 
 " My Dear Sensier ; * * * l am glad you are at Tours and not 
 at Paris. * * * Our hearts and heads are in a vise. * * 
 
 " I can not draw a line out-of-doors. I should immediately be strangled 
 or shot. I was arrested and carried before a military bureau ; I was let off by 
 
200 
 
 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 the reports from the mairie, but I was ordered not even to pretend to be 
 holdmg a pencil. * * * " 
 
 " Cherbourg, 4th October, 1870. 
 
 " To M. Feuardent. 
 
 " Dear Friend : Here we are, encamped in your house in the Rue 
 Hervieu. If the dreadful cause of our presence here could be removed, we 
 would not be so very miserable. 
 
 " How the tempest of trouble has scattered us, my poor friend. Let 
 us hold ourselves with a tight rein not to break out into lamentations, for 
 really, one must do oneself violence not to be forever in that condition. And 
 to think that those who have caused all our misery are not even touched, and 
 enjoy life as if nothing had happened. Oh, curses on them ! 
 
 I have scarcely done anything since we got here ; my poor head is 
 filled with anxiety and sadness. What would really have made me feel like 
 work are the things I can't help seeing when I go out, either the country or 
 the sea; but fancy! I should be instantly seized and, perhaps, torn to pieces if I 
 were seen with even a note-book and pencil. In fact, with my cane only, and 
 no note-book visible, I was questioned six times and more, and in the fiercest 
 way. Every one is in the greatest state of terror; there is more fright 
 than resolution. 
 
 " To return to my work : I have three little pictures under way, which I 
 paint from the third story, where the light is favorable, by closing one window. 
 Indeed, our country is a beautiful one, and how happy I shall be to see it 
 under different circumstances ! But truly, when I find myself forgetting a 
 little and taking pleasure in seeing things, I am angry at myself and call 
 myself an egotist." 
 
 He had left Barbizon expecting soon to return, but he staid 
 more than a year at Cherbourg. The last months of 1870 were full 
 of pain to him, as to all. Many of his letters were lost. All are in a 
 sad and agitated tone. 
 
 " 9th January, 187 1. 
 " Dear Sensier : * * * When shall we ever get out of this horrible 
 state ? Ah, how I hate everything German ! I am in a constant fever. 
 Curses and ruin be upon them ! My strength is nearly exhausted ; but with 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 20 1 
 
 what I have left I wish for you and yours that you may not be too violently 
 shaken by this shock. Death is making a fine harvest the past and the 
 coming year ! * * * " 
 
 " Cherbourg, 27th February, 187 1. 
 
 a * # * news of the peace has just arrived. We don't know 
 
 yet the conditions, which helps us to imagine they are sweet and gentle. 
 
 " I don't dare think of the Germans in Paris and all they may do there. 
 When will poor Paris be itself again — for we have still to fear the action of 
 the different parties, when there is nothing to stop them, and when, on the 
 contrary, they try to get into favor by the general misery — oh, greatest 
 rascality of all ! 
 
 " I have not worked much here, what with my bad health and the 
 trouble in my head — then not to be allowed to make the least sketch for 
 fear of being torn to pieces as a Prussian. I think it can't last, and I may be 
 able to draw a little. What beautiful things to do if I had not my mind so 
 distracted ! I will try, at least, that the evils which brought me here shall 
 make me do like children who profit by a fall to pick up something on 
 the ground." 
 
 Millet was reaching the age when the infinite seems nearer. He 
 could understand the sea, and we saw at the posthumous sale of his 
 works that he knew, often better than professional marine painters, 
 how to express the serenity of distant perspectives, the depth 
 of limpid skies, and the play of light on luminous water. He had 
 always loved the sea; he early understood its mysterious seduction, 
 and still a child, on the cliffs of Greville, he studied the riddle of the 
 enchantress. But those great spectacles, where the horizon and 
 wave play together, demand, to be felt, a certain maturity of mind 
 and heart. 
 
 " Cherbourg, 9th April, 1871. 
 " My Dear Sensier : We are very glad to think you are in Barbizon. 
 What a horrible mess we are in ! Where are we drifting to ? I will not speak 
 of it, for it seems to me a fierce bedlam let loose in the place of intelhgence. 
 My dear Sensier, take as much pleasure as you can in the things of nature; 
 
 26 
 
202 
 
 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 they are always enduring. 1 try, for my part, to drive out of my mind (only 
 I can't do it enough) the horrors which I can not remedy, and plunge myself 
 into work, Durand-Ruel has happily sent to me for pictures, but I can not 
 send him many. ' * * * 
 
 " This country is really very interesting, and has many antique aspects. 
 Putting aside some modern things, one might believe oneself in the time of 
 old Breughel. Many villages look like old Flemish tapestry. What velvety 
 greens ! What a pity the cows don't know how to paint ! " 
 
 While he was thinking of Flemish tapestry, Millet little dreamed 
 that an eccentric group of Paris artists had put his name on their 
 flag. He was not very proud of the remembrance of the hot-heads 
 of Paris, and he addressed the following letter to the " Vigie," of 
 Cherbourg, the Gaulois," and several other journals : 
 
 " Cherbourg, 25th April, 1871. 
 
 " To THE Editor : ' La France,' of Sunday, 23d inst., having come to 
 m.y notice, I find myself named a member of a commission of artists called 
 the deration des Artistes de Paris. 
 
 " I refuse the honor which they have wished to do me. 
 
 " Please insert this card in your journal, and accept my thanks and 
 respects. J.-F. Millet." 
 
 "Cherbourg, May 2d, 187 1. 
 
 " My Dear Sensier : How wretched is all this business in Paris ! Did 
 you see that I had been nominated by the Federation des Artistes de Paris ? 
 1 replied, ' I do not accept the honor which has been offered me.' What a 
 set of wretches they all are ! Courbet, of course, is their president. 
 
 " Our time might be called the time of the great slaughter. One 
 can cry out with the prophet, ' O sword of the Lord, wilt thou never 
 rest ? ' I have no heart to speak of the spring, which comes in spite of 
 all these horrors." 
 
Woman Carrying Milk. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 205 
 
 " 27th May, 1871. 
 
 " Is it not horrible what these wretches have done to Paris ? Enormities 
 without precedent. Beside these the Vandals were conservative ; they at 
 least ravaged a foreign country ! Poor Delacroix, who was so anxious to 
 paint in the public buildings, — what would he say ? " 
 
 " 20th June. 
 
 " We went to pass two days at Greville, where we had not all been. I 
 had been there alone two days in November, and had not returned here. It 
 gives me a great and sad emotion to look like any stranger at the house where 
 I was born and where my parents died. In approaching this poor dwelling, 
 my heart seems to be bursting. How much it brings to my mind! I 
 went over the fields which I once plowed and sowed. Where are those who 
 worked with me ? Where are those dear eyes that, with me, gazed over the 
 stretch of the sea ? 
 
 The fields belong to strangers, who have the right to ask me my 
 business there and to turn me out. I am full of sorrow and melancholy, and 
 can speak of nothing else; it takes hold of me and oppresses me." 
 
 " Greville, 1 2th August. 
 " How I wish, my dear Sensier, that you could see my native place with 
 me ! I fancy this country would please you in many ways, and that you 
 would understand how I become more and more attached to it. Of course, 
 I have reasons that every one has not — the remembrance of my parents and 
 my youth ; but I think it might attract a person open to certain impressions. 
 Oh, how I belong to my native soil ! " 
 
 The 3d of October, 1871, Sensier reached Cherbourg. The tw^o 
 friends immediately began a series of excursions, of which Sensier 
 has sketched an outline. They saw Baumont, Jaubourg, and the 
 Priory of Vauville, of which he made a pen drawing. They went 
 to Greville, saw the church and cemetery, and a little further on 
 the hamlet of Gruchy and Millet's paternal home, the garden of 
 
206 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET. 
 
 his childhood, now in the possession of strangers. Seeing these 
 places, hallowed by tender and painful associations. Millet needed 
 all his s'elf-control to keep from tears. The next day they visited 
 the Hameau Cousin," which Millet painted for M. Feuardent. 
 They also saw the village of EcuUeville, the valley of the Sabine, 
 and, -after another visit to the priory of Vauville, they returned to 
 Cherbourg. To Sensier it seemed as if he had been walking in 
 Millet's pictures. On the 7th of November, 1871, Millet returned to 
 Barbizon. He brought back several pictures, finished or half done. 
 We have not the list of them ; but Sensier mentions a woman carry- 
 ing milk in a copper vessel which she holds on her shoulder, of which 
 we give the sketch. * 
 
 In a letter of December 12, 1871, Millet tells Sensier that the 
 museum of Lille has acquired one of his pictures — A Woman 
 Feeding her Children." [See letter to Thore.] This family scene is 
 one of a series of paintings and drawings which Millet consecrates 
 to children, their charming awkwardness, their delightful greediness, 
 the faltering of their first steps, and their sleep, like the sleep of 
 flowers. Millet had had nine children ; the time was soon coming 
 when he would be a grandfather ; he never lacked models. He 
 always loved to draw or paint children, from the hour of their birth 
 until they grow tall, and begin to learn to read. To this inspiration 
 we owe many of the drawings so much admired in the collection of 
 M. Gavet: "Evening," "The Sick Child," "Little Goose-girl," 
 "The First Steps." Millet spoke with a tenderness unknown to 
 unmarried men of home, children, and the domestic hearth. 
 
 * A milk-carrier of very different design was engraved by Hedouin. 
 
XIIL 
 
 Millefs Last Years. 
 
 E have now come to the last years of Millet. He will never 
 
 V V leave Barbizon again. His circumstances are improved ; he 
 has no longer to wait for orders, and when his pictures appear at 
 sales they bring higher and higher prices. Criticism is disarmed, 
 if not convinced. Millet seems to have reached the goal ; but, 
 unhappily, his health is more and more affected. His stern will is 
 no longer an absolute monarch, and often work becomes difficult. 
 
 " Dear Sensier : We are very much distressed that you should have 
 only illness to console you for sorrow. If, as some Christians believe, God 
 chastens those whom He loves, and gives them a high place above there, you 
 must have a very glorious seat in Paradise. 
 
 " M. Durand-Ruel asks for pictures of all sizes. * * * 
 
 " An American gentleman and lady, M. and Mme. Shaw, of Boston, 
 came, lately, to ask me for a picture. I must paint them one. They chose 
 among my drawings ' The Priory of Vauville.' 
 
 " Detriment and his wife came to get the little shepherd. He wants 
 another picture." 
 
 Barbizon, 8th January, 1872. 
 
208 
 
 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, 
 
 "25th April, 1872. 
 
 "To M. Alfred Bruyas — Sir: Believe me honored and flattered by 
 the request of your letter of the 8th of April. I only regret that I can not 
 immediately comply with your request, as I have had so many demands since 
 my return. But you may depend upon me to remember the object of your 
 wish, and to give it my attention as soon as I possibly can. * * * 
 
 " What you say of the works of Barye does not surprise me ; it is just 
 what I think of him. He is one of the artists best fitted for the accomplish- 
 ment of great things. * * * " 
 
 " Barbizon, 6th August, 1872. 
 
 " Dear Sensier : I have not yet finished my ' Church of Greville.' I 
 have done little. I have groaned more than I have worked, for I have made 
 little more than a sketch. You know the subject : a cow-herd blowing a 
 horn to call his cows together ; end of day (sunset effect). I am working on 
 my * Woman sewing by Lamp-light.' 
 
 " Barye is here. I have not yet seen him. I will go to see him, as he is 
 not out yet, though he is better." 
 
 In 1872 and 1873, Millet finished the pictures begun at Cher- 
 bourg, and worked on others. Besides the landscapes for M. Hart- 
 mann and the young mother with the baby in her arms (life size), 
 he painted the " Priory of Vauville," and several other pictures. 
 Unfortunately, a nervous distress and the frequent recurrence of 
 painful headaches lessened greatly his hours of work. Several 
 remained unfinished, and those he completed he kept by him, think- 
 ing to take them up again and work on them, for, as he often said, he 
 believed with Rousseau that a picture was never finished. The 
 ''Church of Greville," now in the Luxembourg, was in his studio at 
 his death.* 
 
 * The state bought " The Bathers." At the Luxembourg may also be seen four of his 
 drawings, " Shepherdess Knitting," " Shepherdess Seated," " Sewing-women," and " A 
 Church near Cusset." 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 "31st December, 1872. 
 
 " My eyes are very painful. * * * i work very little, which distresses 
 me. My ' Priory ' is in the same state as when you saw it. I will have the 
 measures taken for the cross on Rousseau's tomb. 
 
 "Here goes the year 1872 where all the years have gone! We all 
 embrace you, you and Marguerite, and wish you all we can wish to those we 
 love the best." 
 
 In 1873, M. Camille Lemonnier, a critic at Brussels, sent to 
 Millet a pamphlet called: ''The Paris Salon, 1870." Millet, in a 
 reply, thanking him for it, took the opportunity to express briefly 
 the thought which it seemed to him should be dominant in all 
 art creations. 
 
 " Barbizon, 15th Feb., 1873. 
 
 " Dear Sir : I am very much flattered by your letter, and thank you for 
 making me acquainted with your work as art critic. The most enviable 
 reward of those who try to do their best is to excite the sympathy of intelHgent 
 men. This is equivalent to saying that I am happy to have been the occasion 
 of your expressing certain truths of art. Only, you say of me things which I 
 consider to be so desirable that I dare not believe myself possessed of them. 
 It is not that I would doubt your judgment, but I distrust myself. 
 
 " But let me put myself aside quickly, that I may say (without stumbling 
 over my own toes) that I must give you great praise for considering things 
 from their fundamental side. It is the only true, solid side. Many people, 
 far from taking this point of view, seem to think that art is only a sort of show 
 of professional ability. You understand that the artist must have a high and 
 definite aim. Without it, how can he make efforts to reach a point of which 
 he does not even suspect the existence ? How can a dog pursue game which 
 he can not scent ? It depends, therefore, upon his aim, and the way in which 
 he reaches it, that an artist is of interest. 
 
 " I assure you, sir, that if it only were a question of my own will I would 
 express strongly the type which is, in my opinion, the greatest truth. You are 
 quite right to think that such is my intention. But I find myself started on a 
 
2IO 
 
 JEAN-FRANgoiS MILLET, 
 
 very difficult road, and I do not want to go any farther [in writing]. If you 
 ever come to Paris and get as far as Barbizon, we could talk about it. 
 * * * J.-F. Millet." 
 
 We see him always looking for the type, the accentuation of the 
 physiognomy ; at that time, at least, this was his principal aim. 
 In truth, he had always thought of it, and in his search it had 
 happened to him as to the early masters and sincere painters of 
 the sixteenth century — in piSsuing character he had on the road met 
 ugliness. I mean that, hostile on principle to commonplace idealiza- 
 tions, he was not afraid to put into his rustic compositions figures of 
 rough aspect and coarse individuality, with expressions which seemed 
 to admit that the human is not always vastly superior to the animal. 
 It is this scarcely veiled tendency which so often excited the heat of 
 Theophile Gautier and Paul de Saint- Victor, and which even Thore 
 mentioned in the ''Peasants Bringing Home a Calf" In the "Man 
 with the Hoe," the head of the terrible worker of the ground has 
 something disturbing in it. " The little Barbizon Beggar " is not 
 much beautified, and the "Vine-dresser Resting" is not altogether 
 charming. ''What more terrible than the 'Vine-dresser Resting,'" 
 writes M. Burty, " seated, sweating, the arms hanging and legs 
 apart ! His hands, which have grown knotted like the stock of the 
 vine, his feet dusty, his mouth open, his brow incapable of a thought 
 beyond the vine which has taxed his strength." Millet was 
 convinced that expression redeems everything. 
 
 At a sale on the 7th of April, 1873, Millet had the pleasure 
 of seeing his "Woman with a Lamp" sell for 38,000 francs. His 
 "Washerwoman" reached the price of 15,350, and later, "Geese," 
 
1 
 
i 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 213 
 
 25,000, and the Woman Churning," engraved by M. Martial, 14,00c. 
 If Millet had been vain, these sums might have consoled him for his 
 past misfortunes.* 
 
 " Barbizon, 22d Sept., 1873. 
 "Dear Sensier: Since I saw you I have suffered greatly. My cough 
 kills me. Only these last few days am I a little better. I am breaking down 
 completely, I assure you." 
 
 Unfortunately, the breaking-down of which he speaks is a real 
 thing. In the spring and summer he had been more or less ill. One 
 June night, after an accident, which his letters do not explain, he was 
 seized with a dreadful hemorrhage, which greatly weakened him. An 
 unfortunate cough deprived him for weeks of all vigor or energy. He 
 worked, nevertheless, and finished several pictures. At the sale of his 
 studio effects, some of the unfinished pictures of this time were seen ; 
 especially two unfinished shepherdesses were to be regretted. In one, 
 the tower of the mill of Chailly showed on the horizon ; in the other, 
 I think more advanced, the shepherdess was bringing back her flock. 
 The sun is already set ; the girl walks, followed by her sheep, which a 
 dog, mounted on a hillock, watches as they hurry past. The land- 
 scape is wrapped in vapor. Millet always understood the melancholy 
 of evening and the silent hour when the first stars come out. 
 
 Millet's correspondence stops abruptly in the spring of 1874. 
 Writing, formerly so easy to the brave artist, has become a fatigue. 
 
 " Barbizon, i8th March, 1874. 
 " How long it is since I have written to you, my dear Sensier ! I am in 
 such a weak state of health that I put off from day to day what I have to do. 
 Believe me, I think of you all the same. If my body is weakened, my heart 
 is not colder. * * * " 
 
 * [During Millet's life-time, "The Angelus " was resold for 50,000 francs. — Trans.] 
 
214 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 The Republic wished to repair the long forgetfulness of the past. 
 The administration of the Beaux Arts, then headed by a writer to 
 whom the honor of French art was always precious, conceived the 
 idea of decorating the cold walls of the Pantheon, or of Sainte 
 Genevieve — for it seems the Pantheon is a church without looking 
 like it. M. de Chennevieres, to his honor be it said, did not forget 
 Millet. The I2th of May, 1874, the Minister signed an order allowing 
 him 50,000 francs for the execution of decorative paintings in the 
 chapel of Sainte Genevieve. 
 
 The order came very late. Millet was to paint the Miracle des 
 Ardents " and the procession of the shrine of Sainte Genevieve — in 
 all eight subjects, four big and four little. He immediately began to 
 make out in charcoal the plan of his compositions. He was both 
 appalled and delighted at such an attractive task, but death did 
 not permit him to carry it out. 
 
 Sensier and M. Hartmann went to see Millet on the 9th of July, 
 1874. He was finishing the ''Priory" for Mr. Shaw, and "The 
 Spring," for M. Hartmann, was finished. He was working on two 
 others, Hay-cocks" and " Buckwheat-Thrashers." 
 
 *' We saw in the studio," writes Sensier, another subject almost 
 done, and promising to be very fine, — a reminiscence of Millet's 
 home : a sea-view, framed by the posts of a gate-way, opening on 
 land going down to the shore. Some cows feeding in the inclosure, 
 whose heads only were visible, permitted the artist to express the 
 steep movement of the soil. The strength of color was extraordi- 
 nary." The visitors must have also seen his Ass on a Moor," — 
 on the incline of a rocky piece of ground an ass braying ; above 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 215 
 
 the landscape a great spring sky, in which the luminous clouds, 
 driven by the wind, whirl up in spirals. This strange and brilliant 
 picture was much admired. 
 
 Sensier staid a week. Millet was very melancholy. 
 
 " One day in August, the day after Notre- Dame, Millet felt a little 
 better. All the children and grandchildren were assembled. We decided to 
 go all together for a long drive in the forest. We went off full of gayety, the 
 young people in front in an open wagon; Millet, his wife, and I, in a Httle 
 caleche, brought up the rear. The day was pure and clear. Millet was open 
 and talkative, and seemed happy to see his numerous offspring around him. 
 He had words of kindness and affection for me. 
 
 " ' Friends,' he said, ' get tired or leave us, in the hard moments of life. 
 Some die or disappear. You have remained. You have always helped, 
 sustained, encouraged, and understood me.' 
 
 " The drive was long. We saw again Bellecroix, the valley of the Solle, 
 Mount Chauvet, the Calvary, the old forest trees, the rocks of St. Germain, — 
 all the marvels of this forest of inexhaustible enchantment. And Millet kept 
 ever returning to the memory of past times, the splendors of this living nature, 
 which had decided him to cut loose from old mythology. I shall never forget 
 this day. I saw him several times again, but never in such bright spirits. He 
 suffered all the time, and knew that the great day of rest was approaching." 
 
 The autumn was sad. In November, Millet was already very 
 weak, but he still worked. He finished his Priory," which he sent to 
 America. He thought over his decorations for Sainte Genevieve, and 
 improved them. He sketched the Sewing- Lesson," — a quiet rustic 
 scene, in which, as usual, he throws over daily labor a poetic charm, 
 and in which an open window shows a garden full of greenery. 
 
 In the month of December, the fever became more frequent, 
 with intervals of delirium, followed by long prostration. Here and 
 
2l6 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 there he had days of calm, in which he was conscious of his state. 
 He made his last requests, talked a great deal to his children, 
 begged his family to keep together, and said, with a touching 
 melancholy, that his life was closing too soon — that he died just 
 as he began to see clearly into nature and art. 
 
 Sometimes he regained a little serenity, and believed — or 
 pretended to believe — in a possible recovery. He asked to have 
 Redgauntlet," which he had once liked, re-read to him. But 
 Millet could not again feel the pleasure that the book had inspired 
 in his youth. 
 
 At the end of December he went to bed, and did not 
 rise again. 
 
 Sensier gives us, in a note, a pathetic detail. In the first days 
 of January, 1875, when the doctors no longer hid their anxiety 
 about him, Millet had gone to sleep between two attacks of fever. 
 He was suddenly awakened by the noise of guns and the baying 
 of a pack of hounds. A stag, driven by the hunters and filled 
 with frenzied terror, had jumped the fences, and taken refuge in a 
 neighbor's garden. The wretched animal was cruelly butchered. 
 Millet, who had never liked huntsmen, was struck by the tragedy. 
 It is an omen," said he. 
 
 He was right ; he had but a few days to live. The great painter 
 breathed his last on the 20th of January, 1875, at six in the morning. 
 
 Everywhere his death created a feeling of profound regret. A 
 volume could be made of the newspaper articles written about him. 
 His friends, who had long understood him, expressed eloquently 
 their sorrow. Those even who had been indifferent were touched ; 
 
Shepherdess with Sheep. 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 2ig 
 
 they discovered that the French school had sustained an irreparable 
 loss. The time of old recriminations was past, and irony was silenced. 
 On the 6th of April, an exhibition was opened for the benefit of the 
 Millet family. In June the collection was sold, and in the interval 
 the contents of the artist's studio were sold at the Hotel Drouot. 
 They consisted principally of sketches in pastels, water-colors, and 
 crayon. People then saw how wide a field the master covered, what 
 variety there was in his manner, the intensity of his conviction, and 
 the strength and gracefulness of his handling. 
 
 Millet was worthily praised. Those who remember good 
 criticism have not forgotten the two articles by M. Philippe Burty in 
 the ''Republique Frangaise," nor the excellent notice by M. Charles 
 Yriarte in " L'Art." Belgium, where Millet had many friends, 
 and where, thanks to M. Arthur Stevens, his works were to be found 
 in famous collections at a time when the French amateurs were still 
 indifferent, — Belgium also brought her praises to the painter of 
 Barbizon. And even America sent her testimony of esteem and 
 regret. The article by Mr. Edward Wheelwright, in the " Atlantic 
 Monthly" of September, 1876, is one of the most complete and 
 personal studies that have been published of Millet. 
 
 Such an enumeration must perforce be incomplete. But we can 
 not pass over some phrases, sympathetic in spite of their reserve, 
 which Fromentin has written about Millet : 
 
 " An original painter of our own time, a lofty soul, a melancholy spirit, a 
 good heart, a nature truly rustic, has said of the country and country people, 
 of the severity, the melancholy, and the nobility of their work, things which no 
 Dutchman would have ever dreamed of looking for. He said them in a 
 
220 JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET, 
 
 language a little rude, and under forms where the thought has more clearness 
 and vigor than the hand. We were deeply thankful for his tendencies ; and 
 in the French school of painting we saw in him the sensibilities of a Burns, 
 less clever than the poet in making himself understood. After all, has he or 
 not left beautiful pictures ? Has his form, his language — I mean that exterior 
 envelope without which the things of the mind can not exist or last — has it 
 the qualities to make him a beautiful painter, and to assure his future fame? 
 He is a profound thinker compared with Paul Potter and de Cuyp ; he is a 
 sympathetic dreamer compared with Terburg and Metsu ; he has something 
 incontestably noble when we think of the trivialities of Steen, Ostade, and 
 Brauwer. As a man, he puts them all to the blush ; as a painter, is he 
 their equal ? " 
 
 Our friend Fromentin, who pushed his penetration to the verge 
 of uneasiness, has asked an indiscreet question. The difficulty of 
 judging definitively of the talent of a contemporary master was seen 
 by a writer who sometimes compromises himself so far as to express 
 our own thought. The Temps" of 2d March, 1875, contains some 
 lines where the author has tried to explain why Millet was dear to us. 
 This quotation may serve as a conclusion to the present volume : 
 
 " There is in every work of art a sort of perfume which evaporates with 
 time. A new breath passes over the mind, generations coming up, seeking a 
 new ideal, are often uncertain and troubled before some picture or drawing, 
 which, at the moment that the artist finished it, aroused in the soul of his 
 contemporaries a whole world of sentiment and ideas. Something like this 
 may perhaps happen to Millet. In the future it may create surprise that his 
 cause was defended with such extreme heat, at a time when his advance met 
 with resistance. Did this rustic really occupy in modern art the great place 
 which our esteem has made for him ? Why not ? Let it be remembered to 
 what meager diet we were then condemned — how few consolatory spectacles 
 had been offered to us. During the historic period ending in 1870, we saw the 
 painful work of artists who, under pretext of style, moved about in an artificial 
 
PEASANT AND PAINTER. 
 
 221 
 
 world, which amounted to nothing but supreme stupidity. Life was not in it. 
 So, when, after his first gropings, we found in Millet healthy simplicity and 
 frankness, a certain grandeur reflected upon types which were not invented, — 
 an almost unconscious remembrance of the methods dear to the old masters, 
 — we praised his effort and went out to welcome this new poetry. The future 
 will decide whether we have made a mistake or not. It seems to us that 
 Millet brought into the school a new element, a manner which by condensing 
 form generalizes and aggrandizes it. 
 
 " It would be a mistake to reproach him with having suppressed details 
 and taken away accidentals ; he was seeking the essential, and he found it. 
 Millet had his ideal, and even if he did not always succeed in reaching it, it 
 will always be to his honor that he strove with indomitable energy to be 
 faithful to truth while escaping the littleness of prose." 
 
i 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 SENSIER had often begged Millet to write down the thoughts which came to him 
 on questions of art. Millet was not a writer, and thought that his art work ought 
 to present a clear enough expression of his thoughts and his dreams. Once or twice, 
 however, he consented to take pen in hand. This " note," which we found among 
 his friend's papers, will be read with interest : 
 
 " When Poussin sent to M. de Chantelou his picture of the * Manna,' he did not say, 
 * Look, what fine pdte ! Isn't it swell ? Isn't it tip-top ? ' or any of this kind of thing 
 which so many painters seem to consider of such value, though I can not see why they should. 
 He says : ' If you remember the first letter which I wrote to you about the movement of the 
 figures which I promised you to put in, and if you look at the whole picture, I think you will 
 easily understand which are those who languish, which are filled with admiration, those who 
 pity, those who act from charity, from great necessity, from desire, from the wish to satiate 
 themselves, and others — for the first seven figures on the left hand will tell you all that is 
 written above, and all the rest is of the same kind.' 
 
 " Very few painters are sufficiently careful as to the effect of a picture seen at a distance 
 great enough to see all at once, and as a whole. Even if a picture comes together as it 
 should, you hear people say, ' Yes, but when you come near it is not finished ! ' Then of 
 another, which does not look like anything at the distance from which it should be seen : ' But 
 look at it near by ; see how it is finished ! ' Nothing counts except the fundamental. If a 
 tailor tries on a coat, he stands off at a distance great enough to see the fit. If he likes 
 the general look, it is time enough then to examine the details ; but if he should be satisfied 
 with making fine button-holes and other accessories, even if they were chefs-d^ceiivres, on a 
 badly cut coat, he will none the less have made a bad job. Is not this true of a piece of 
 architecture, or of anything else ? It is the manner of conception of a work which should 
 strike us first, and nothing ought to go outside of that. It is .an atmosphere beyond which 
 nothing can exist. There should be a milieu of one kind or another, but that which is 
 adopted should rule. 
 
 " As confirmation to the proposition that details are only the complement of the 
 fundamental construction, Poussin says : ' Being fluted (pilasters) and rich in themselves, we 
 
 223 
 
224 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 should be careful not to spoil their beauty by the confusion of ornament, for such accessories 
 and incidental subordinate parts are not adapted to works whose principal features are already 
 beautiful, unless with great prudence and good judgment, in order that this may give grace 
 and elegance, for ornaments were only invented to modify a certain severity which constitutes 
 pure architecture.' 
 
 *' We should accustom ourselves to receive from Nature all our impressions, whatever 
 they may be and whatever temperament we may have. We should be saturated and impreg- 
 nated with her, and think what she wishes to make us think. Truly, she is rich enough to 
 supply us all. And whence should we draw, if not from the fountain-head ? Why forever 
 urge, as a supreme aim to be reached, that which the great minds have already discovered in 
 her, because they have mined her with constancy and labor, as Palissy says ? But, neverthe- 
 less, they have no right to set up for mankind one example forever. By that means the 
 productions of one man would become the type and the aim of all the productions of 
 the future. 
 
 " Men of genius are gifted with a sort of divining-rod ; some discover in Nature this, 
 others that, according to their kind of scent. Their productions assure you that he who finds 
 is formed to find ; but it is funny to see how, when the treasure is unearthed, people come for 
 ages to scratch at that one hole. The point is to know where to find truffles. A dog who has 
 not scent will be but a poor hunter if he can only run at sight of another who scents the game, 
 and who, of course, must always be the first. And if we only hunt through imitativeness, we 
 can not run with much spirit, for it is impossible to be enthusiastic about nothing. Finally, 
 men of genius have the mission to show, out of the riches of Nature, only that which they are 
 permitted to take away, and to show them to those who would not have suspected their 
 presence nor ever found them, as they have not the necessary faculties. They serve as trans- 
 lators and interpreters to those who can not understand her language. They can say, like 
 Palissy : ' You see these things in my cabinet. ' They, too, may say : ' If you give yourself up 
 to Nature, as we have done, she will let you take away of these treasures according to your 
 powers. You only need intelligence and good- will. ' 
 
 " It must be an enormous vanity or an enormous folly that makes certain men believe 
 that they can rectify the pretended lack of taste or the errors of Nature. On what authority 
 do they lean ? With them who do not love her and who do not trust her, she does not let 
 herself be understood, and retires into her shell. She must be constrained and reserved with 
 them. And, of course, they say : ' The grapes are green. Since we can not reach them, let 
 us speak ill of them.' We might here apply the words of the prophet: God resisteth the 
 proud, and giveth grace to the humble. 
 
 " Nature gives herself to those who take the trouble to court her, but she wishes to be 
 loved exclusively. We love certain works only because they proceed from her. Every other 
 work is pedantic and empty. 
 
 " We can start from any point and arrive at the sublime, and all is proper to be 
 expressed, provided our aim is high enough. Then what you love with the greatest passion 
 and power becomes a beauty of your own, which imposes itself upon others. Let each bring 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 225 
 
 his own. An impression demands expression, and especially requires that which is capable 
 of showing it most clearly and strongly. The whole arsenal of Nature has ever been at the 
 command of strong men, and their genius has made them take, not the things which are con- 
 ventionally called the most beautiful, but those which suited best their places. In its own 
 time and place, has not everything its part to play ? Who shall dare to say that a potato 
 is inferior to a pomegranate ? 
 
 "Decadence set in when people began to believe that art, which she (Nature) had made, 
 was the supreme end ; when such and such an artist was taken as model and aim without 
 remembering that he had his eyes fixed on infinity. 
 
 " They still spoke of Nature, but meant thereby only the life-model which they used, 
 but from whom they got nothing but conventionalities. If, for instance, they had to paint 
 a figure out-of-doors, they still copied, for the purpose, a model lighted by a studio light, 
 without appearing to dream that it had no relation to the luminous diffusion of light out-of- 
 doors — a proof that they were not moved by a very deep emotion, which would have pre- 
 vented artists from being satisfied with so little. For, as the spiritual can only be expressed by 
 the observation of objects in their truest aspect, this physical untruth annihilated all others. 
 There is no isolated truth. 
 
 " The moment that a man could do something masterly in painting, it was called good. 
 If he had great anatomical knowledge, he made that pre-eminent, and was greatly praised for 
 it, without thinking that these fine acquirements ought to serve, as indeed all others should, to 
 express the thoughts of the mind. Then, instead of thoughts, he would have a programme. 
 A subject would be sought which would give him a chance to exhibit certain things which 
 came easiest to his hand. Finally, instead of making one's knowledge the humble servant of 
 one's thought, on the contrary, the thought was suffocated under the display of a noisy clever- 
 ness. Each eyed his neighbor, and was full of enthusiasm for a manner. 
 
 " My small experience in writing * * * makes me omit a great many things, 
 which causes obscurities. Try, therefore, to guess what I intended to say without taking 
 literally what I have said. What I began to say was not sufficiently thought out before saying 
 it ; and I have not written enough. But I will try to come back to it, and do it with 
 less haste," 
 
 29 
 
INDEX. 
 
 "African campaigns, A scene of our, " 6i. 
 "Age of Gold, The," 71. 
 American artists in Barbizon, loi, 102. 
 Angelico, Fra, 51. 
 
 "Angelus, The," 119, 132, 133, 139, 213. 
 
 Art, Millet's views of, 49, 72, 93, 100, loi, 120, 
 
 124, 141, 142, 158, 159, 160, 165, 172, 180, 191, 
 
 197, 198, 209, 223. 
 "Ass on a moor," 214. 
 Atlantic Monthly, 219. 
 Azevedo, 67. 
 Babcock, William, loi. 
 Bale, 193. 
 Balzac, loi. 
 
 Bandinelli, Baccio, 159, 160. 
 
 Barbier, loi. 
 
 Barbizon, 81, &c., &c. 
 
 Barye, VI., 77, 114, 143, 208. 
 
 " Bathers," 71, 208. 
 
 Beaux Arts, School of the, 47. 
 
 " Beggar, The little Barbizon," 210. 
 
 Belgium, 219. 
 
 Belly, 81, 143. 
 
 Beranger, 43. 
 
 Bertin, 60. 
 
 Bible, The, 35, 59, 84, 108. 
 Boisseau, 54. 
 Bossuet, 35. 
 Boucher, 51, 58, 59. 
 Boudin, 59. 
 Boulanger, Louis, loi. 
 Bracquemond, 193. 
 Brauwer, 41, 220. 
 Brussels, 144, 209. 
 " Buckwheat thrashers," 214. 
 Burns, Robert, 164, 165. 
 Burty, Philippe, 219. 
 Byron, 43. 
 
 "Calf, The birth of the, ' 148, 170, 171, 210. 
 
 Campredon, 73, 114, 123. 
 
 " Captivity of the Jews in Babylon," 74. 
 
 Carriera, Rosalba, VII. 
 Castagnary, 171. 
 Cavalier, 53. 
 Chailly, 89, 213. 
 " Charity," 58. 
 Charron, 18. 
 Chateaubriand, X., 43. 
 Chavannes, Puvis de, 191. 
 
 Cherbourg, 17, 40, 42, 43, 44, 60, 65, 199, 200, 
 
 201, 202. 205, 206. 
 "Child bird-nesting," 66. 
 " Child, The sick, " 206. 
 Children, Millet's pictures of, 206. 
 " Children with the wheelbarrow," 72. 
 " Christ rising from the tomb," 160. 
 " Church near Cusset," 208. 
 Cimabue, 180. 
 Claude Lorraine, 60. 
 Clerget. 81. 
 Cogniet, Leon, 52. 
 Constable, John, IX. 
 Cooper, James Fenimore, 43. 
 Corot, 60, 131, 143, 183, 193. 
 Correggio, 60, 62. 
 Courbet, 138, 144, 202. 
 Cousin, Jean, 59. 
 Coutances, Cathedral of, 49. 
 Couture, 53, 54, 68, loi, 176. 
 " Crows, The," 148. 
 Cuyp, 220. 
 Dante, 119, 166. 
 " Daphnis and Chloe," 66, 
 Daubigny, 143, 193. 
 Daumier, 143. 
 David, 40. 
 
 " Day at Trianon, A," 59. 
 
 "Death and the wood-cutter, ' 133, 134, 137, 
 
 139, 189, 198. 
 Decamps, 60, 137, 138. 139. 
 Delacroix, Eugene, 50, 60, loi. 112, 143, 169, 
 
 176, 177, 199, 205. 
 
 227 
 
228 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 de Kock, Paul, 43. 
 
 Delaioche, Paul, 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 60, 132. 
 
 de Serres, Olivier, Vll., 140. 
 
 Diaz, v., VI., 60, 62, 68, 71, 77, 90, 101, 114, 
 
 139, 143, 180. 
 Dieterle. 67, 73. 
 Drolling, 52. 
 
 "Drunken Bacchante upheld by two young 
 
 Bacchants, A," 66. 
 Dubois, Ambroise, 168. 
 Dumas, Sr., Alexandre, loi, 134. 
 Dupont, Pierre, iii. 
 Dupre, Victor, 77. 
 Duprd, Jules, VI., 60, 125, 143. 
 Diirer, Albert, 59. 
 Eaton, Wyatt, 102, 184. 
 EcuUeville, 27, 108, 206. 
 Etchings, destruction of plates of, 193. 
 " Evening," 206. 
 Fenelon, 35. 
 
 Feuardent, 43, 65, 180, 200, 206. 
 Feydeau, VII., 175, 183. 
 " First steps. The," 206. 
 " Flight into Egypt," 160. 
 " Flute lesson. The," 66. 
 
 Fontainebleau, Decorations of Palace of, 168, 
 179, 184. 
 
 Fontainebleau, Forest of, 87, 146, 215. 
 Fragonard, 72. 
 Freminet, 168, 179. 
 Frere, Edouard, 53. 
 Fromentin, 219, 220. 
 
 Gautier, Theophile, 90, loi, 112, 154, 210. 
 
 Gazette des Beaux Arts, 137, 142. 
 
 " Geese, " 210. 
 
 Gendron, 53. 
 
 Gerome, 143, 144. 
 
 Giorgione, 52, 142. 
 
 " Girl brushing away flies from her sleeping 
 
 lover, A," 66. 
 " Girl in a wood, Young," 71. 
 "Gleaners, The," 94, 119. 126, 189. 
 Goethe, 43, 87. 
 " Goose-girl, The little, " 206. 
 Greek art. How to attain the spirit of, 165. 
 Greville, 17, 33, 89, 107, 185, 205, 208. 
 " Group of youths and maidens resting under 
 
 the trees," 71. 
 Gruchy, 17, 60, 106, 205. 
 Guichard, Joseph, 67. 
 " Gypsies," 66. 
 Haden, Seymour, 193. 
 Havre, 66. 
 " Hay-cocks," 214. 
 " Hay-makers, The " 81. 
 Hearn, loi. 
 Hebert, 53. 
 
 Hedouin, Edmond, 137, 206. 
 
 Henry, Aimee-Henriette-Adelai'de, see Millet, 
 
 Mother of. 
 Herculaneum and Pompeii, 180. 
 Hersent, 52. 
 Holbein, Hans, 84, 193. 
 
 " Hoe, Man resting on the," 148, 150, 154, 157, 
 
 210. 
 Homer, 43. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 43, loi. 
 Hugo, Francois Victor, 166. 
 Hunt, William Morris, loi, 120. 
 " Immaculate Conception, An," 131, 
 Ingres, 52. 
 
 "Jacob and Laban," 59. 
 acquemart, Jules, 193. 
 apanese Art, 169, 194. 
 Jacque, Charles, 67, 73, 81, 82, 94. 
 Jeanron, V., 74. 
 jouvenet, 51. 
 
 Jumelin, Louise, see Millet, Grandmother of. 
 
 " Knitting Lesson," 198. 
 
 L'Art, 219. 
 
 La Bruyere, X. 
 
 Lachambeaudie, iii. 
 
 Lacoste, Eugene, 67. 
 
 La Fontaine, X., 93. 
 
 La Hague, 17, 18. 
 
 Lamartine, loi. 
 
 " Lamb, A girl \vith a," 71. 
 
 Lamennais, 166. 
 
 Langlois, 43. 
 
 " Late Watch, 'I he," 59, 
 
 Lavieille, 90. 
 
 Lebrun, 51. 
 
 Ledru-RoUin, 74. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 59. 
 
 Leroy, Louis. 81. 
 
 Leslie, Charles, IX. 
 
 Lesueur, 51. 
 
 Louvre, The, 49, 50, 51, c;2, 62. 
 
 Low, Will H., 102. 
 
 Luxembourg, The, 49, 50. 
 
 " Man with a wheell^arrow full of grass," 71. 
 
 Mantegna, 50. 
 
 Mantz, Paul, VIIl., XII., 137, 178. 
 
 Marolle, 57, 58, 59. 
 
 Martin, Hughes, 81. 
 
 Memling, 197. 
 
 Mery, loi. 
 
 Meryon, 143. 
 
 Metsu, 220. 
 
 Michael Angelo, 50, 52, 59, 62, 89, 180. 
 
 Michel, George, VII. 
 
 " Milk-girl, The little," 61. 
 
 Millet, Jean-Frangois, his family, 17; birth, 22; 
 recollections of childhood, 26 to 38 ; at school, 
 32, 43 ; begins to draw, 35 ; begins art stud- 
 ies, 39; father dies, 42; receives annuity, 44; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 229 
 
 goes to Paris, 45, 46, 47 ; enters Delaroche's 
 studio, 53 ; leaves Delaroche finally, 56 ; 
 studies at Suisse's, 56 ; begins life as an artist, 
 57 ; first picture at the Salon, 60; paints por- 
 traits of his family, and sign-boards, 61 ; first 
 marriage, death of wife, 61, 62; poverty, 62; 
 goes to Cherbourg, 65 ; second marriage, 66 ; 
 at Havre, 66 ; settles in Paris, 67; starvation, 
 74 ; the Revolution, 77 ; removes to Barbizon, 
 81 ; meets Rousseau, 81 ; complete consecra- 
 tion to subjects- of country life, 83; "The 
 Sower," 88; the gay side of nature, 93; 
 Grandmother dies, 95 ; Mother dies, 96; visits 
 Greville, 106, 107; not a revolutionist, X., 72, 
 III, 126, 127, 146, 157, 189 ; harassed by 
 creditors, 117 ; his use of landscape with fig- 
 ures, 125; "The gleaners," 126; " The An- 
 gelus,"i32; "Death and the wood-cutter" 
 rejected at the Salon, 134 ; visited by De- 
 camps, 137; a three-years' contract, 139; 
 explains his own pictures, 141 ; photographed, 
 146; confession of faith, 158; illustrates The- 
 ocritus, 164 ; undertakes decorative painting, 
 168, 183, 184 ; interest in Delacroix, 169 ; 
 interest in Japanese art, 169, 194; death of 
 sister, 186; at Vichy, 186; success in the 
 Universal Ejchibition of 1867, 189 ; made 
 Chevalier of Legion of Honor, 192 ; visits 
 Bale, etc., 193 ; at Cherbourg, the German 
 war, 199 ; refuses membership in Federation 
 des Artistes de Paris, 202 ; visits with Sensier 
 his old home, 205; his death, 216. 
 
 Millet, Father of, 19, 20, 40, 41, 42. 
 
 Millet, Great-uncle of, 21, 27. 28, 31. 
 
 Millet, Grandfather of, 18. 
 
 Millet, Grandmother of, 18, 19, 22, 25, 61, 68, 95. 
 Millet, Mother of, 20, 21, 61, 95, 96. 
 Mistral, 166. 
 
 Montaigne, X., 18, 140, 159, 180, 191. 
 
 Montmartre, 78. 
 
 Mouchel, 40, 41, 42. 
 
 Murillo, 52. 
 
 Musset, Alfred de, 57. 
 
 Nicole, 18. 
 
 Night, description of, 120, 121. 
 Normandy, 17, etc., 60, etc. 
 " November," 198. 
 Notre-Dame, 49. 
 
 " CEdipus being taken from the Tree," 68, 71. 
 
 "Old Man's Calendar, The," 59. 
 
 Ostade, Van, 73, 94, 197, 220. 
 
 Pain, Effect of, upon an artist, 72. 
 
 Palissy, Bernard, 140, 180. 
 
 " Pan, Offering to," 66. 
 
 Pantheon, The, 214. 
 
 Paris, First impressions of, 46; lack of sympa- 
 thy with, 73. 
 Pascal, i8. 
 
 " Peasant spreading manure," 95, 114. 
 " Peasant grafting," 112, 113. 
 Peasant types. Millet's, 124, 134, 210. 
 " Peasants going to work," 90. 
 Pelloquet, Theodore, loi, 145, 158, 190. 
 Picot, 52. 
 
 " Pig-killers," 199. 
 
 Pope, Picture for railway carriage of the, 131. 
 
 Port Royal, Writers of, 18, 35. 
 
 " Potato-harvest, The," 189. 
 
 " Potato-planters," 149, 189, 190. 
 
 Potter, Paul, 220. 
 
 Poussin, 51, 52, 59, 140, 147,. 176, 223. 
 " Priapus, Sacrifice to," 66. 
 Prices of Millet's pictures, 213. 
 Primaticcio, 168, 179. 
 
 " Priory of Vauville," 205, 206, 207, 208, 214, 
 215. 
 
 Proudhon, loi, 190. 
 
 Pujol, Abel de, 52. 
 
 " Reading of the novel. The," 59. 
 
 Rembrandt, 41, 52, 197. 
 
 Restout, 62. 
 
 Revolution of 1848, 77. 
 
 Ribera, 52. 
 
 Ribot, 193. 
 
 Ricard, 143. 
 
 Rosso, 168. 
 
 Rousseau, Jean, 171, 172. 
 Rousseau, Madame, 194. 
 
 Rousseau, Theodore, VI., VII., 60, 81, 94, 105, 
 106, 107, 112, 113, 114, 117, 119, 123, 125, 139, 
 143, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 169, 170, 191, 194, 
 197, 209. 
 
 Roux, 56. 
 
 Rubens, 52. 
 
 " Ruth and Boaz, ' 59, 84, loi. 
 
 " Saint Anthony, Temptation of," 66, 68. 
 
 Saint Augustine, 35. 
 
 Saint Francis of Assisi, 22. 
 
 Saint B'rancis of Sales, 35. 
 
 Saint Jerome, 35. 
 
 Saint Ouen, 78, 81. 
 
 Saint Victor, Paul de, loi, 157, 210. 
 
 " Saints, Lives of the," 35. 
 
 Salon, Millet's feeling about the, 154. 
 
 " Samson and Delilah," 77. 
 
 Sand, Georges, 90, loi, 113. 
 
 Scribner's Monthly, XII. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 43, 216. 
 
 Sechan, 67, 73. 
 
 Sensier, V., <S:c., 72, 140, 169, 175, 178, 193, 
 
 194, 199, 205, 207, 213, 215. 
 " Sewing by lamp-light. Woman," 208. 
 " Sewing-lesson," 215. 
 " Sewing-woman asleep," 66. 
 " Sewing-women," 132, 208. 
 " Sewing, Young Women," 94. 
 
230 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shakspere, 43, 166. 
 Shaw, Quincy A., 89, 207, 214. 
 " Sheaf-binders, The," 89. 
 "Sheep-feeding," 148. 
 
 "Sheep-shearer, The," loi, 139, 144, 145, 184, 
 189. 
 
 "Sheep-shearing," 139, 142. 
 
 " Shepherd bringing'home his sheep," 154. 
 
 " Sfiepherd in the fold by moonlight," 139. 
 
 " Shepherdess knitting," 208. 
 
 " Shepherdess seated," 208. 
 
 " Shepherdess, The," 171, 184, 189. 
 
 "Shepherd, The,"ioi, 189. 
 
 Shipwrecks, 36, 37, 38. 
 
 Silvestre, Theophile, 189, 190. 
 
 Smugglers, 22. 
 
 Soulie, Frederic, loi. 
 
 " Sower, The," 88, 89, 90, iii, 125. 
 
 "Spinning-woman," 198. 
 
 " Spring, The," 214. 
 
 " Stag, The," 148. 
 
 Ste. Genevieve, 52, 59, 214. 
 
 Steen, Jan, 220. 
 
 Stevens, Alfred, 143, 191. 
 
 Stevens, Arthur, 133, 139. 
 
 Sublime in Art, The, 83, 197, 198, 224. 
 
 Suicide, 128, of Vallardi, 150. 
 
 Suisse, 56, 59. 
 
 Teniers, 41. 
 
 Terburg, 198, 220. 
 
 Theocritus, 164, 165, 166, 167. 
 
 Thore, 141, 171, 194, 197, 198, 210. 
 
 Tobit, 145. 
 
 Toussaint, 67. 
 
 Troyon, VI., jz. 
 
 " Two Lovers," 66. 
 
 Universal Exhibitions, The, 112, 188. 
 
 Vanloo, 62. 
 
 Vasari, 52. 
 
 Vechte, 77. 
 
 Velasquez, 52. 
 
 Veronese, Paul, 176. 
 
 " Vert-vert," 59. 
 
 Vichy, 186, 190, 191. 
 
 " Vine-dresser resting," 210. 
 
 Virgil, 33, 34, 35, 108, 112, 113, 164. 
 
 " Waiting," 99, 119, 144. 
 
 " Washerwoman," 210. 
 
 Watteau, 51, 58, 59. 
 
 Wheelwright, Edward, 102, 219. 
 
 " Winnower," 74. 
 
 " Winter," 148. 
 
 "Wool-carder, The," 148, 154. 
 " Woman carrying milk," 206. 
 " Woman churning," 198, 213. 
 " Woman coming home with fagots. Old," 66. 
 "Woman feeding her children," 139, 142, 144, 
 206. 
 
 " Woman going to draw water," 141. 
 "Woman seen from behind, lying on a bed," 71. 
 " Woman with a lamp, "210. 
 " Youth giving a girl to drink near a statue of 
 
 Bacchus," 66. 
 Yriarte, 219. 
 Yvon, 53. 
 Ziem, 143. 
 
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