Anatomy of a Painting
“The Human Side
Is What Touches Me Most”
Jean-François Millet’s identification with peasant life
informed his painting.
By Jerry N. Weiss
A
mong the painters of the
Barbizon school—a group
of 19th-century artists who
settled and worked in the Forest of
Fountainbleau outside Paris—none
was more dedicated to the subject of
peasant life than Jean-François Millet
(French, 1814–1875). Like his friends
Corot, Rousseau and Daubigny, Millet
was a first-rate landscape painter, but
he was unique. Other artists moved
to the village of Barbizon as an alter-
native to city life, but for Millet, the
French countryside was home. He was
born and raised on a farm and identi-
fied with those who worked the land.
Millet’s famous paintings—The
Gleaners, The Sower, The Angelus—
appear to our eyes to be sentimental
idealizations. Yet in their time they
werelandmarksofrealism.As
describedbyMillet’sbiographer,
AlexandraR.Murphy,thecultural
stratificationofmid-19thcentury
Francesoundsinsomewayseerily
familiar.Landownersfearedfield
workers—popularlycharacterizedas
dirtyandbrutish—asincipientrevolu-
tionaries.Theseperceptionsattached
toMillet’sart,whichwasdescribed
ascrudeandugly.“They[theParis
artcritics]wishtoforcemeintotheir
drawing-roomart,tobreakmyspirit.
No,no!I wasbornasa peasant,anda
peasantI willdie.”Intruth,MilletwasNoondayRest
(1866;pastelandblackconté
crayononbuf fwovepaper,11½x16½)
byJean-FrançoisMilletneither sentimental nor vulgar, but
a great draftsman who observed
nobility in the mundane. He
melded an appreciation of classical
draftsmanship with the depiction of
a culture he well understood.
Despite the initial criticism of
his work, Millet gained dedicated
patrons. One such collector was Émile
Gavet, a Parisian architect who began
purchasing the artist’s work through
galleries. In 1865, he approached
Millet with a proposition: Millet
would produce all of his pastels—
of any subjects he chose—for Gavet
only. In return, Gavet would pay
more than the going rate for them.
The artist settled on a less exclusive
arrangement, and Gavet agreed to pay
for 20 pastels or drawings, for which
heprovidedfinepaper.Intheseveral
yearsthatfollowed,Milletproduced
nearly 100 worksforGavet.Noonday
Restwasoneofthefirstpastels
completedforthecommission.PJJerryN.Weissisa contributingwriterto
fineartmagazines.Heteachesatthe
ArtStudentsLeagueofNewYork.“I was born as
a peasant, and
a peasant I will die.”
Jean-François Millet, whose
own roots traced back to the
French countryside, elevated
peasant life in the 1860s,
giving it a quiet nobility.14 Pastel Journal AUGUST 2019