PLATE VI.—SPRING(In the Louvre)It is probable that Millet wished this picture to be regarded rather as a symbolical representation of Spring, than as an actual study from Nature. The storm that has just passed over has been severe, but of short duration. The sun, breaking through the dense banks of clouds, reveals the splendours of the water-sodden landscape; the apple-trees full of bloom, the verdantly green grass, the young foliage on the distant trees, all reveal the benefit they have received from the downpour.
PLATE VI.—SPRING(In the Louvre)
It is probable that Millet wished this picture to be regarded rather as a symbolical representation of Spring, than as an actual study from Nature. The storm that has just passed over has been severe, but of short duration. The sun, breaking through the dense banks of clouds, reveals the splendours of the water-sodden landscape; the apple-trees full of bloom, the verdantly green grass, the young foliage on the distant trees, all reveal the benefit they have received from the downpour.
Freed from all encumbrances save poverty, Millet was now to work out his own destiny according to the dictates of his genius. He joined a friend named Marolle, and the two together occupying a very small apartment endeavoured to eke out an existence. It was only too soon apparent that young as he was, and the taste of the public being not yet ready for development upon the lines his genius directed him, that his livelihood could not be secured by endeavouring to sell such subjects as appealed to him. In these straits he turned to portrait-painting, just as many great painters before and since him have done. That the struggle was very keen can well be imagined by the fact that he was unable to obtain more than five to ten francs apiece; and, as commissions were very scarce, he was hard put to gain the means of subsistence. This state of affairs lasted until 1840, in which year he endeavoured to obtain admission to the Salon with two portraits, oneof which was that of his friend. This, however, was rejected, and the other picture, although accepted, was unnoticed by either the critics or the public.
Having occasion the next year to pay a visit to Cherbourg, he felt obliged to report himself to the Municipal Council who had had the generosity to send him in the first place to Paris. Its worthy members expressed themselves as but little satisfied with the result of their investment; they claimed that they had had as yet but little to show for their money, and they suggested, partly as a means of demonstrating that they had had some little return, and also, in order to see of what stuff theirprotégéwas made, that he should paint a portrait of the recently deceased mayor. As Millet had not been personally acquainted with that worthy citizen, and as the only guide which could be supplied him was a portrait made in miniature when he was a young man of some twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, the task was by no means easy. However, the artist set to work with a will, and finally accomplished the picture to his own satisfaction. Upon it being shown to the Council, one and all declared, as any onewith the slightest knowledge of such matters could have told them before it was commenced, that it bore not the least resemblance to the defunct magistrate. They therefore demurred at the three hundred francs they had agreed to pay him for the portrait, and offered him one-third of that amount instead. Millet was deeply offended by the insult, and informed the Council that he made them a present of the picture.
It was during this short visit to his native country that he met his first wife, a Mlle. Ono, whose portrait he had painted. From the first she was very delicate, and he lost her after much suffering, three years later. His second wife was Mlle. Catherine Lemaire, who was destined to be the companion of his struggles until the end of his life.
Meanwhile Millet was occupied with subjects which he thought would appeal to the general public. A number of classical pictures date from this epoch. It was an endeavour on his part to fall in as far as possible with the current taste, and so supply means of subsistence for his family. At the same time he did not neglect his favourite subjects, and many are the wonderful studies of peasant life which date from theseyears. His reputation had so far advanced that he was offered the position of teacher of drawing in the college at Cherbourg. It must have been only after prolonged deliberation that he refused the proffered post. Here a certain annual stipend was assured him, and if it was not large in itself it would at any rate suffice to keep the wolf from the door. He preferred, however, to return to Paris and work out his own destiny as best he might.
Millet, who lived at this time in the Rue Rochechouart, began to surround himself with that little group of friends who remained faithful to him until the end of his career. Amongst the earliest were Charles Jacque and Diaz: the latter had several clients amongst the small dealers, whom he induced to visit Millet’s studio and make now and again a small purchase.
Millet now became a fairly regular contributor to the Salon, but generally sent some classical or religious picture as well as one of his peasant subjects. For example, in 1848 he sent the marvellous study of “The Winnower,” which we all know so well, accompanied by a canvas, “The Captivity of the Jews at Babylon.” The latter, however, was so badly received thathe utilised the canvas upon its return for a large picture of a “Shepherdess tending her Sheep.”
In spite of the headway that he was making, the struggle for existence seemed keener than ever, and but for the kindness of friends he and his family would frequently have actually wanted for food. A timely advance of one hundred francs obtained for him from the Minister of Fine Arts, together with a commission from the State, for which he was paid the sum of eighteen hundred francs, were for some time the only relief he obtained from his embarrassments. That he was not particular as to how he earned his daily bread is apparent from the fact that he did not despise an order for a shop sign for a midwife, for which he was paid the miserable amount of thirty francs.
The year 1848 was not an encouraging one for a painter who was standing on the threshold of his career. The whole of Europe was seething with revolution. A repetition of the fearful year of 1792 was everywhere expected. The struggle betwixt reaction and property on the one hand, and lawlessness and revolution on the other, was being waged with grim determination. The issue was for long in the balance. Onenever knew from one day to another what was going to happen. In such a deplorable state of affairs men’s minds were running on politics and wars rather than upon art. Millet amongst the rest was called upon to shoulder the musket, and it can be easily imagined with what reluctance he did so.
Paris, the great centre of art, had yet not afforded him much encouragement. Life was dear in the big city, and surrounded on all sides by bricks and mortar he was not free to go out into the fields and study the objects which were uppermost in his mind. He resolved to escape from it, and once having put the plan into execution he never returned.
The Barbizon of 1850 was a very different place from the Barbizon of to-day. The world fame of the men who passed a quiet and strenuous existence in the little village has transformed it into a tourist resort, with restaurantsand cafés, the stopping-places for waggonettes which in summer bring their daily load of sightseers, eager to see the homes of the painters whose names are now household words.
It would have been well-nigh impossible for the little band to have chosen a more suitable spot for their labours. Rousseau and Millet, much as they were drawn towards each other by the tie of a sympathetic disposition and by their common interest in art, yet were widely dissimilar from one another in their outlook upon art and their methods of worship at the common shrine. Rousseau—one can see it from every picture he painted—loved with all the yearning of a passionate and restless temperament the inanimate in Nature. Observe with what fidelity he draws his trees, with what caressing tenderness his clouds and skies are treated; solitude appealed to him above all things, and if here and there he was obliged to insert a few figures to complete his composition, one instinctively feels that he would rather have substituted a group of cattle or a flock of sheep. In the glades of the forest, far from the busy haunts of men, with the glorious sunlight penetrating from above, the breeze moaning through the branches, he was happy. A wild and turbulent temperament such as his not infrequently discovers exquisite enjoyment amidst such perfect tranquillity.
PLATE VII.—THE SAWYERS(In the South Kensington Museum)Very few of Millet’s works can rival this superb picture in vigour of handling and magic of line. He has succeeded in infusing an enormous amount of energy into the two figures, without sacrificing refinement. The absolute stillness of the wood beyond is unbroken, save by the monotonous hacking of the wood-cutter, who, axe in hand, is making a determined onslaught upon a venerable tree. As an example of Millet’s powers as a painter it would be hard to beat, and in it he has preserved those rare qualities of freedom and rhythm of line we find in his best drawings.
PLATE VII.—THE SAWYERS(In the South Kensington Museum)
Very few of Millet’s works can rival this superb picture in vigour of handling and magic of line. He has succeeded in infusing an enormous amount of energy into the two figures, without sacrificing refinement. The absolute stillness of the wood beyond is unbroken, save by the monotonous hacking of the wood-cutter, who, axe in hand, is making a determined onslaught upon a venerable tree. As an example of Millet’s powers as a painter it would be hard to beat, and in it he has preserved those rare qualities of freedom and rhythm of line we find in his best drawings.
Barbizon, situated on the fringe of the great forest of Fontainebleau, therefore, permitted Rousseau to come into daily contact with the scenes which so appealed to him.
Millet, on the other hand, was absorbed in the peasant. The man who tilled the soil and raised the produce humanity requires for its subsistence by the sweat of his brow; the manifold duties of the labourer, his life and sorrows, appealed to him with irresistible force. An unpeopled track of wild and uncultivated land would not call forth any emotion in him, no matter how sublime the scenery might be. The life of the village, spreading itself into the vast and fertile plain behind, held him absorbed; a peasant himself and living amongst the people he so loved, he was in a position to bring before an unthinking world the poignant monotony of their useful lives.
Upon their first arrival at Barbizon, the two artists put up at a small inn, working all dayin a tiny place they had rented from some peasants and fitted up as a studio. The inconveniences of this arrangement were soon apparent, and shortly afterwards Millet took a small house which was destined to be his abode for the remainder of his life; an old barn in the immediate vicinity meanwhile provided him with an excellent studio.
From this period onward we must date the greatest productions of the master, the works which have induced more thought than those of any other peasant painter. A peasant among peasants, his life was of the most rigid simplicity. Behind his little abode a large garden stretched away almost to the fringe of the forest itself, and here he was accustomed to work every morning, growing a portion of the food necessary to the sustenance of his family. The afternoon he devoted to painting, whilst the evening was given over to intercourse with his little circle of friends. The simplicity and tranquillity of his life aroused the whole of his powers to action, and surrounded with everything he valued in life he was supremely happy.
The country around Barbizon appealed tohim irresistibly. The timber-studded plains, the gently undulating, highly cultivated fields, presented a strange contrast to the wild and rugged country amidst which he had spent his childhood, and no doubt conduced to the development of a more refined and contemplative style than he would otherwise have acquired. Upon his few visits to his native country he appears to have been more impressed than ever with its austerity, and the drawings which these journeys called forth bore ample evidence of this feeling in him.
Lack of the necessary funds to carry on even his simpleménagewas ever the bane of Millet’s life. On many occasions Sensier, his intimate friend and afterwards his biographer, informs us he dissuaded him from suicide.
The sums that he owed, small though they were, rendered him in constant fear of the brokers. With creditors so importunate in their demands for satisfaction, and with the constant lack of recognition, which was his lot, it is astonishing that Millet achieved so much. He was relieved more than once by the kind-hearted and ever faithful Rousseau, who when his friend was sorest pressed found some delicately hidden means to relieve him. It was he who acquiredfor 4000 francs the wonderful “Peasant grafting a Tree,” when the picture failed to find a purchaser; and in order that Millet should not be aware of his generosity, he made the offer in the name of an imaginary American. This sort of goodness he repeated more than once, and it redounds still more to his credit when we remember that Rousseau himself was not infrequently in pecuniary difficulties.
A constant succession of important works made their appearance during the first ten years Millet spent at Barbizon. The first was the well-known “Sower,” which has ever been one of the most popular of his pictures. Then came the far finer “Peasants going to Work,” which for many years was in an English Collection. The “Gleaners,” perhaps the noblest canvas the master ever painted, dates from 1857, in which year it was seen at the Salon; the celebrated “Angelus” followed it two years later. The prices which Millet obtained for this series of remarkable works was fantastically small. The “Gleaners” brought him a paltry 2000 francs, whilst he accounted himself lucky to encounter an amateur who gave him the same sum for the small “Woman feeding Fowls.” The “Angelus,”which was never exhibited, was sold in the year it was painted to a Monsieur Feydeau, an architect, for 1800 francs. It then passed through several hands before the late Monsieur Secrétan competed up to 160,000 francs before he became possessed of the prize at the John Wilson sale.
The purchase, however, proved a sound investment, for upon the dispersal of his collection it was knocked down for 553,000 francs to a Monsieur Proust, acting on behalf of the French Government. The latter, however, when they gave the commission to buy the picture, had no idea that such a high value would be placed upon it, and consequently refused to ratify the sale; a syndicate now came upon the scene, who took it to America. The price, however, proved greater than even the millionaires of the States were prepared to give, and the canvas again returned to France, where it found a resting-place in the collection of Monsieur Chauchard, who paid the enormous sum of 800,000 francs for its possession.
In 1859 Millet sent two works to the Salon, a “Woman grazing her Cow,” and “Death and the Woodman.” The latter, one of the mostphilosophical of Millet’s pictures, which to-day is the principal attraction of the Jacobsen Museum at Copenhagen, was rejected. Disappointments of this kind came with such systematic regularity to the painter that he must have become proof against them. He always had bitter enemies amongst the critics, who never failed to pour abuse upon his method and his subjects. Even a number of his fellow artists joined in the chorus of disapproval. But the vehemence with which he was attacked was striking evidence of the impression he was making and the inward sense of his own powers; and the fact that he was working out his destiny according to the dictates of his own genius supported him against this outpouring of prejudice and malice. The social side of life appealed to him more strongly as the years rolled on, and the murmurings which had been heard in 1859 as to the socialistic tendencies of “Death and the Woodman” swelled to a roar when the stupendous “Man with the Hoe” was exhibited fourteen years later. The latter, one of the most virile studies of depraved humanity which the world has ever seen, has always been a favourite with social reformers, and has inspiredone remarkable poem. Even his most implacable critics were disarmed before this canvas; its power was magnetic; it was an inspiration, soul moving and trenchant.
His financial difficulties never completely dispersed. At one time, in order to insure himself a little tranquillity, he made a contract with two speculators, whereby they were to become possessors of all the work he produced for three years, in consideration of their assuring him a thousand francs a month. A great number of Millet’s finest productions passed thus through their hands, including the “Return from the Fields” and the “Man with the Hoe.” The partners were not long in quarrelling, and after a lawsuit had been fought, Millet was left in the hands of a man who frequently would not or could not pay him in ready money, and whose bills he was frequently forced to discount at considerable loss.
One little gleam of sunshine rendered his later days happy. This was a commission from a Colmar banker, Monsieur Thomas by name, who required four allegorical compositions representing the Seasons, to decorate his rooms. The artist was overjoyed by this piece of goodfortune, and immediately commenced a most conscientious study of such mural decoration as was within reach, in order that he might do full justice to his patron. He paid frequent visits to Fontainebleau and the Louvre, and even desired a friend to inquire if he could not obtain reproductions of the frescoes at Herculaneum and Pompeii. In spite of all this elaborate preparation, the subjects were not such as appealed to his genius, and in spite of them being well and soundly painted, we are told that they presented no features which called for special comment.
He found, however, a much more genial occupation in accomplishing a series of drawings ordered by a Monsieur Gavet, who paid the artist 1000, 700, and 450 francs each, according to their size. He made altogether ninety-five drawings in this way, and it is said that this gentleman had in his possession the finest work in black and white and water-colour the artist ever executed.
Towards the latter end of his life the death of dear relatives and friends cast a sorrowful gloom over him. Amongst the latter Rousseau, who expired in his presence on the 22nd ofDecember 1867, was perhaps the loss which seemed to him hardest to bear. A staunch and trusty friend, who was to be relied upon when his prospects seemed the most hopeless, he had been one of the very few who had appreciated Millet’s talents at their full worth, and who, moreover, scanty as his own means were, was ever ready to stretch out his hand to assist his struggling friend.
PLATE VIII.-THE SHEEP-FOLD(In the Glasgow Corporation Art Galleries)The poetry of moonlight has never been better realised than by Millet. The lonely watch of the shepherd, the huddling together of the sheep, the dreary mystical plain stretching away to the horizon, losing itself finally in the vaporous atmosphere of the chilly night, are all rendered with astonishing fidelity. It is in such works as these that the master reveals his sympathy with the solitude of many phases of peasant life.
PLATE VIII.-THE SHEEP-FOLD(In the Glasgow Corporation Art Galleries)
The poetry of moonlight has never been better realised than by Millet. The lonely watch of the shepherd, the huddling together of the sheep, the dreary mystical plain stretching away to the horizon, losing itself finally in the vaporous atmosphere of the chilly night, are all rendered with astonishing fidelity. It is in such works as these that the master reveals his sympathy with the solitude of many phases of peasant life.
Shortly afterwards Millet paid a visit to his patron, Herr Hartmann, at Münster, and from here he went for a short time into Switzerland. Upon his return he devoted himself with great earnestness to work, and achieved a certain success at the Salons with his exhibits. The outbreak of the war with Germany caused him to migrate with his family to Cherbourg, where he thought he might continue to work, removed as far as possible from the scenes of carnage and struggle which were going on farther east. Transported once more amongst the scenes of his childhood, he felt an increased impetus to production, and when he returned to Barbizon late in 1871, he brought with him a number of canvases of the highest quality; conspicuous amongst themwas the wonderful “Gréville Church,” now in the Louvre.
The anxieties of his troublous life were, however, beginning to show their effect upon his constitution; a persistent cough developed, and although an amelioration would occasionally occur, it was always succeeded by a worse condition than before. His health suffered a general decline, and he finally breathed his last on the 20th of January 1875. He was buried in the little cemetery of Chailly, beside his friend Rousseau, amidst the scenery they both loved so well.
Millet is an instance of an artist working out his own destiny, impelled by irresistible genius, in the teeth of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. He started life with enormous disadvantages; without friends in influential circles to spread his fame or plead his cause; without money to enable him to outlive and triumph over the ignorant fanaticism of critics andartists, so soaked in the conventionalised art of their time that they had not perception enough to appreciate the full meaning of that naturalistic movement, which was finally to sweep away the quasi-classic art they boasted of with such bombastic effusion. The path was hard and thorny, and his triumph was not finally consummated until after his death. He himself found his only satisfaction in the fact that he had lived his life according to the dictates of his genius, and had achieved the maximum of which he was capable.
Millet and our own Cotman were somewhat kindred spirits; there is much more affinity between the work of the two men than is apparent to any one who has not closely studied them. The marvellous “Breaking the Clod,” now happily permanently housed at the British Museum, betrays the same tremendous conception and broad outlook which characterises many a drawing of Millet’s. Both highly strung to a painful extent, they were each conscious of their inability to curb the power which prescribed a certain course for them, and in spite of pecuniary difficulties and unpopularity, an inevitable result of their intense originality,they pursued a steady course to the end of their lives.
The socialistic doctrines which have been read into the work of Millet are rather the outcome of the world’s uneasy conscience being brought face to face with a crushing indictment of existing conditions, than of any design on the artist’s part to further the cause of a political propaganda by means of his art. This somewhat extravagant reading into his art has certainly been carried to excess. Particularly has such been the case in America, where a large number of his finest works are at present to be found, curiously enough in the hands of enormously wealthy people, who are frequently perhaps the least able to understand the real meaning of his message.
Coming from a peasant stock, his sympathies were always with the peasant; it was the only class he understood or cared for. He lived as one of them, and shared to a large extent in their labour. He has been designated, not inappropriately, the philosopher in sabots. Rightly or wrongly he has come to be looked upon as one of the high priests of communistic doctrines. Few pictures have been so anathematised asthe “Man with the Hoe,” and perhaps none have done more to inculcate sympathy with the degradation of the lower orders of the human race. The revolting brutality and vacancy of that face haunts the imagination. Is it possible that fellow-creatures so utterly debased by toil and neglect exist? Millet dispels any doubt upon the question by bequeathing to humanity this trenchant portrait. By no means limited to Barbizon or France, these poor creatures exist in every country, and curiously enough are considered an essential element in each country’s development.
This poignantly human note is observable in almost every work Millet wrought; his passionate sympathy with his fellow-man is the keynote of his art. The wood-cutter in his arduous toil, the shepherd in his solitariness, the labourer turning the soil with unvarying and laborious monotony, the mother caring for her children—all carry the same message for him of that strange and incomprehensible mingling of joy and sadness we call life. Like many great minds before and since his time, our artist found the greatest joy in life in a placid and never changing melancholy. But the peasantshe chose knew nothing of the sadness he saw in them. Completely inured to their toil, and subdued by it, with no refining or uplifting influence to stimulate them, they knew nothing, aspired to nothing beyond what they were; it was left to Millet to supply the “might have been.” He saw the inky blackness of the mind of the “Man with the Hoe,” the pathetic inequality between the mounted farmer directing the safe storage of his crop, and the stooping figures of the “Gleaners” eager to scrape up the miserable crumbs which had fallen from the rich man’s table. He traced the lives of these simple folk until we arrive at the grim and gaunt figure of Death, who, as he grasps the woodman by the shoulder, reminds him that his course is finished and that he, in common with all his fellow-men, must enter the great unknown land from which there is no return. It is a sad and melancholy art, vibrating with purity and truth, the outpouring of a great soul yearning to express itself to the utmost of its power. The mind and character of the man can be read in every line and in every touch of the brush. His drawings and etchings are even more searching in their virility than his pictures.There is a spontaneousness about them we search for in vain in his work in oil and pastel. In black and white his intensely emotional mind found a swift method of expression; in the laboriousness of oil painting he was fettered with the complications of the medium. It can be fairly said that only in one or two paintings—a notable example can be cited in the wondrous “Sawyers” at South Kensington—does he rise to the height of a great painter. Millet was a poet, a philosopher, a great thinker, and the means he chose for expressing himself were those which were best fitted to his purpose. His predilections in art were concentrated upon the greatest, and consequently the men who appealed to him were the thinkers of the ages. Mantegna and Correggio, Michel Angelo and the mighty Greeks, these were the masters who left their impress upon his mind and art.
The influence of so sincere and profound an artist has necessarily been profound. He has moulded men who have achieved world-wide fame; Segantini, for example, would never have risen to the heights he did had the example of Millet not been ever before him. There have been many who, without possessing his genius,have endeavoured to follow in his footsteps, but successfully as his imitators have sometimes caught his style, their productions can never live alongside his, because they lack the real ring of sincerity.
The plates are printed byBemrose & Sons, Ltd., Derby and LondonThe text at theBallantyne Press, Edinburgh