Jean-François Millet

Lore & Background

Millet was the first child of Jean-Louis-Nicolas and Aimée-Henriette-Adélaïde Henry Millet, members of the farming community in the village of Gruchy, in Gréville-Hague, Normandy. Under the guidance of two village priests, he acquired a knowledge of Latin and modern authors, but soon had to help his father with farm work. All the farmer's work was familiar to him, and these motifs returned in his later art. In 1833, his father sent him to Cherbourg to study with a portrait painter named Bon Du Mouchel, and by 1835 he was studying with Théophile Langlois de Chèvreville. A stipend enabled Millet to move to Paris in 1837, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts with Paul Delaroche. In 1839, his scholarship was terminated, and his first submission to the Salon was rejected.

After his first painting was accepted at the Salon of 1840, Millet returned to Cherbourg to begin a career as a portrait painter. He married Pauline-Virginie Ono in 1841, and they moved to Paris. After rejections at the Salon of 1843 and Pauline's death in April 1844, Millet returned again to Cherbourg. In 1845, he moved to Le Havre with Catherine Lemaire, whom he married in a civil ceremony in 1853; they had nine children. In Paris in the mid-1840s, he befriended artists who became associated with the Barbizon school, including Constant Troyon, Narcisse Diaz, Charles Jacque, and Théodore Rousseau. In 1847, his first Salon success came with Oedipus Taken down from the Tree, and in 1848, his Winnower was bought by the government. His ambitious work The Captivity of the Jews in Babylon was scorned at the Salon of 1848 and eventually disappeared; in 1984, scientists discovered it was painted over by Millet's 1870 painting The Young Shepherdess.

In 1849, Millet settled in Barbizon with Catherine and their children. In 1850, he entered into an arrangement with Alfred Sensier, who provided materials and money in return for drawings and paintings. At that year's Salon, he exhibited Haymakers and The Sower, his first major masterpiece. From 1850 to 1853, he worked on Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz), which marked his transition from symbolic imagery to contemporary social conditions. In the mid-1850s, he produced etchings of peasant subjects. His painting The Gleaners (1857) was submitted to the Salon to an unenthusiastic, even hostile, public. The Angelus was commissioned by Thomas Gold Appleton and completed during the summer of 1857; Millet added a steeple and changed the initial title to The Angelus when the purchaser failed to take possession. Displayed to the public for the first time in 1865, the painting changed hands several times. Upon Millet's death, a bidding war between the US and France ensued, ending with a price tag of 800,000 gold francs. The disparity between the painting's value and Millet's poor estate was a major impetus in the invention of the droit de suite.

Reader's Guide

Jean-François Millet's significance lies in his role as a founder of the Barbizon school and his central place in the Realism art movement. His focus on peasant farmers, drawn from his own upbringing in a farming community, brought a new dignity and directness to depictions of rural labor. Works such as The Sower, The Gleaners, and The Angelus became iconic, though they initially met with mixed or hostile reception. Millet's influence extended to later artists: Vincent van Gogh drew important inspiration from him, particularly during his early period, and Millet's late landscapes influenced Claude Monet's paintings of the Normandy coast. His structural and symbolic content also affected Georges Seurat. The controversy over the resale value of The Angelus after his death helped spur the creation of the droit de suite, a legal mechanism to compensate artists or their heirs upon resale. Millet's legacy is thus both artistic and legal, marking him as a pivotal figure in 19th-century French painting.

Did You Know?

• Millet's painting The Young Shepherdess (1870) was discovered in 1984 to have been painted over his earlier work The Captivity of the Jews in Babylon, likely due to material shortages during the Franco-Prussian War.
• The disparity between the value of The Angelus and Millet's poor estate was a major impetus in the invention of the droit de suite.
• Millet's first submission to the Salon, Saint Anne Instructing the Virgin, was rejected in 1839.
• Millet married Catherine Lemaire in a civil ceremony in 1853 and later in a religious ceremony on 3 January 1875, just days before his death.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Millet had little sympathy with the French poet Alfred de Musset and criticized the tendencies of his poetry severely." — Jean-François Millet "his now famous picture 'Death and the Woodcutter', had been rejected at the Salon, and the important and conservative journal 'Gazette des Beaux Arts' was most indignant. The well known Hedouin engraved this work." — Jean-François Millet "Boisseau criticized Millet; he was one of the master's pets of art-teacher Paul Delaroche in Paris, that time'" — Jean-François Millet "At last, here is a new man [Millet], who has the knowledge which I would like to have, and movement, color, expression, too, - here is a painter!" — Jean-François Millet