Everything about Jean-fran Ois Millet totally explained
Jean-François Millet (
October 4,
1814 –
January 20,
1875) was a French
painter and one of the founders of the
Barbizon school in rural
France. He is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers. He can be categorized as part of the movement termed "naturalism", but also as part of the movement of "realism".
Life and work
Youth
Millet was the first child of Jean-Louis-Nicolas and Aimée-Henriette-Adélaïde Henry Millet, members of the peasant community in the village of
Gruchy, in
Gréville-Hague (
Normandy). Under the guidance of two village priests, Millet acquired a knowledge of Latin and modern authors, before being sent to
Cherbourg in 1833 to study with a portrait painter named
Paul Dumouchel. By 1835 he was studying full-time with Lucien-Théophile Langlois, a pupil of
Baron Gros, in
Cherbourg. A stipend provided by Langlois and others enabled Millet to move to
Paris in 1837, where he studied at the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts with
Paul Delaroche. In 1839 his scholarship was terminated, and his first submission to the
Salon was rejected.
Paris
After his first painting, a portrait, was accepted at the Salon of 1840, Millet returned to Cherbourg to begin a career as a
portrait painter. However, the following year he married Pauline-Virginie Ono, and they moved to Paris. After rejections at the Salon of 1843 and Pauline's death by
consumption, Millet returned again to Cherbourg. In 1845 Millet moved to
Le Havre with Catherine Lemaire, whom he'd marry in a civil ceremony in 1853; they'd have nine children, and remain together for the rest of Millet's life. In Le Havre he painted portraits and small genre pieces for several months, before moving back to Paris.
It was in Paris in the middle 1840s that Millet befriended
Constant Troyon,
Narcisse Diaz,
Charles Jacque, and
Théodore Rousseau, artists who, like Millet, would become associated with the Barbizon school;
Honoré Daumier, whose figure draftsmanship would influence Millet's subsequent rendering of peasant subjects; and
Alfred Sensier, a government bureaucrat who would become a lifelong supporter and eventually the artist's biographer. In 1847 his first Salon success came with the exhibition of a painting
Oedipus Taken down from the Tree, and in 1848 his
Winnower was bought by the government.
Barbizon
In 1849 Millet painted
Harvesters, a commission for the state. In the Salon of that year he exhibited
Shepherdess Sitting at the Edge of the Forest, a very small oil which marked a turning away from previous idealized pastoral subjects, in favor of a more realistic and personal approach. In June of that year he settled in
Barbizon with Catherine and their children.
In 1850 Millet entered into an arrangement with Sensier, who provided the artist with materials and money in return for drawings and paintings, while Millet simultaneously was free to continue selling work to other buyers as well. At that year's Salon he exhibited
Haymakers and
The Sower, his first major masterpiece and the earliest of the iconic trio of paintings that would include
The Gleaners and
The Angelus.
From 1850 to 1853 Millet worked on
Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz), a painting he'd consider his most important, and on which he worked the longest. Conceived to rival his heroes
Michelangelo and
Poussin, it was also the painting that marked his transition from the depiction of symbolic imagery of peasant life to that of contemporary social conditions. It was the only painting he ever dated, and was the first work to garner him official recognition, a second-class medal at the 1853 salon.
The Gleaners
One of the most well known of Millet's paintings,
The Gleaners (1857), was preceded by an earlier version, a vertical composition painted in 1854, and then by an etching of 1855-56 which directly presaged the horizontal format of the painting now in the Musée d'Orsay. It depicts women stooping in the fields to
glean the leftovers from the harvest, and is a monumental composition devoted to the rigors of the
working class.
Picking up what was left of the
harvest was regarded as one of the lowest jobs in society. However, Millet offered these women as the heroic focus of the picture; previously, servants were depicted in paintings as subservient to a noble or king. Here, light illuminates the women's shoulders as they carry out their work. Behind them, the field that stretches into the distance is bathed in golden light, under a wide, magnificent sky. The forms of the three figures themselves, nearly silhouetted against the lighter field, show balance and harmony.
The Angelus
Commissioned by a wealthy American, Thomas G. Appleton, and completed during the summer of 1857, Millet added a steeple and changed the initial title of the work,
Prayer for the Potato Crop to
The Angelus when the purchaser failed to take possession in 1859. Displayed to the public for the first time in 1865, the painting changed hands several times, increasing only modestly in value, since some considered the artist's political sympathies suspect. Upon Millet's death a decade later, a bidding war between the US and France ensued, ending some years later with a price tag of 800,000 gold francs.
The disparity between the apparent value of the painting and the poor estate of Millet's surviving family was a major impetus in the invention of the
droit de suite, intended to compensate artists or their heirs when works are resold.
Later years
Despite mixed reviews of the paintings he exhibited at the Salon, Millet's reputation and success grew through the 1860s. At the beginning of the decade he contracted to paint 25 works in return for a monthly stipend for the next three years, and in 1865 another patron, Emile Gavet, began commissioning pastels for a collection that would eventually include 90 works. In 1867 the
Exposition Universelle hosted a major showing of his work, with the
Gleaners,
Angelus, and
Potato Planters among the paintings exhibited. The following year Frédéric Hartmann commissioned
Four Seasons for 25,000 francs, and Millet was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.
In 1870 Millet was elected to the Salon jury. Later that year he and his family fled the
Franco-Prussian War, moving to Cherbourg and Gréville, and didn't return to Barbizon until late in 1871. His last years were marked by financial success and increased official recognition, but he was unable to fulfill government commissions due to failing health. On January 3, 1875 he married Catherine in a religious ceremony. Millet died on January 20, 1875.
Legacy
Millet was an important source of inspiration for Vincent van Gogh, particularly during his early period. Millet and his work are mentioned many times in Vincent's letters to his brother Theo. Millet's late landscapes would serve as influential points of reference to
Claude Monet's paintings of the coast of
Normandy; his structural and symbolic content influenced
Georges Seurat as well.
Millet is the main protagonist of Mark Twain's play
Is He Dead? (1898), in which he's depicted as a struggling young artist who fakes his death to score fame and fortune. Most of the details about Millet in the play are fictional.
The
Angelus was reproduced frequently in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Salvador Dalí was fascinated by this work, and wrote an analysis of it,
The Tragic Myth of The Angelus of Millet. Rather than seeing it as a work of spiritual peace, Dalí believed it held messages of repressed sexual aggression. Dalí was also of the opinion that the two figures were praying over their buried child, rather than to the
Angelus. Dalí was so insistent on this fact that eventually an X-ray was done of the canvas, confirming his suspicions: the painting contains a painted-over geometric shape strikingly similar to a coffin. However, it's unclear whether Millet changed his mind on the meaning of the painting, or even if the shape actually is a coffin.
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