Handwerker Gallery Newsletter

Spring 1999 – Volume 1, Number 1

From the Permanent Collection

Until 1849 French painter Jean-François Millet (b. Gruchy, 1814; d. Barbizon, 1875) produced portraits and figure subjects, mainly female nudes, in a romantic vein. A government commission in 1850 for The Haymakers Resting (Louvre) enabled him to move to Barbizon, away from tumultuous revolutionary Paris. In Barbizon Millet, influenced by his friend Théodore Rousseau, concentrated on rural subjects and landscapes. Paintings such as The Sower (1850–51, Philadelphia Museum of Art) led to the accusation that he was a socialist, and his work extolling the virtues of labor — for example, The Gleaners (1857, Louvre) and The Man with the Hoe (1859–62, Mrs. Henry Potter Russell Collection) — regularly elicited this charge.

Le Figaro just published two letters by the great Millet; these letters show the painter in a very peculiar light and clearly indicate the petty side of this talented man. It is very discouraging. . . . The great Millet indignantly protests against the Commune, whom he characterizes as barbarians and vandals. . . .

Because of his painting The Man with the Hoe, the Socialists thought Millet was on their side, assuming that this artist, who had undergone so much suffering, this peasant of genius who had expressed the sadness of peasant life, would necessarily have to be in agreement with their ideas. Not at all.

I was not much surprised. He was just a bit too biblical. Another one of those blind men, leaders or followers, who unconscious of the march of modern ideas, defend the idea without knowing it, despite themselves!

(Camille Pissaro, letter to his son, May 2, 1887)

Millet’s position was secured by his winning a first-class medal in 1864 and the Legion of Honor in 1868. The government commissioned him to decorate a chapel of the pantheon in 1874, but he died before the work could begin.

Millet’s late landscapes with peasant figures arranged simply earned him success. Such paintings as The Angelus became popular images of peasant life. Part of the power of Millet’s figure groups of peasants derived from his insistence on the classical virtues of relief and simplicity, virtues implanted in him by his extensive formal education. He won increasing success through his friendship with William Morris Hunt, an American who brought him patrons.