The Romantic Movement In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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The great struggle for liberty and truth in art, begun by the Romantics and landscape painters already mentioned, was carried a stage further by Jean Francois Millet (1814-75), who was the first to paint the peasant, not as a sort of ‘stage property’ in a landscape, but as he truly lived and moved. Millet came of peasant stock, and during his boyhood worked hard in the fields with his father, whose home was in the hamlet of Gruchy, near Cherbourg. When he was eighteen, his father, recognizing the lad’s talent, allowed him to study art in Cherbourg, but as the eldest son he returned to manage the farm on his father’s death in 1835. His heart, however, was still in his art, and seeing this his mother and grandmother heroically determined not to allow him to sacrifice himself, but soon persuaded him to return to Cherbourg. There his talent was recognized by the Municipality, who gave him a grant of forty pounds, and with this he went to Paris in 1836 and entered the studio of historical painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856). During the next twelve years, spent partly in Paris and partly in Normandy, Millet experienced nothing but trouble, he married in 1841, and his wife died in 1844; at the end of 1845 he married again, and found a devoted and courageous helpmate in his second wife.

At this period of his life Millet chiefly painted portraits and small pictures of classical or mythological subjects, and already his color—in which he was considerably influenced by Correggio—began to attract attention and the admiration of other artists. He became friendly with Diaz, and through Diaz got to know Rousseau and others. In 1847 his picture ‘Œdipus taken from the Tree’ was favorably noticed in the Salon by Théophile Gautier, who prophesied that the painter would become famous, and in the following year Millet’s picture of a peasant woman was given a place of honor in the best room at the Salon. It looked as if the painter was on the point of achieving a popular success, for he had also been finding a ready sale for small pictures of nude figures, which he painted with great skill. But about this time he accidentally overheard somebody speaking of him as ‘Millet, who paints nothing but naked women,’ and this chance remark so upset him that he then and there determined never again to paint the nude. Already town life and town manners were distasteful to him; he longed for country air to breathe and the peasant people whom he knew and loved to paint.

In 1849 he decided to change his manner of life, and with his wife and babies he removed to Barbizon, where Rousseau and Diaz were already settled. In this peaceful village Millet made his home, and found his true vocation in chronicling in a series of noble paintings the dignity of peasant labor. To the Salon of 1850 he sent his unforgettable picture of ‘The Sower’, a work of epic grandeur which seems to symbolize the Present preparing the Future in the guise of an agricultural labourer fulfilling his common task. During the next ten years Millet painted some of his greatest pictures, ‘The Gleaners’ in 1857, ‘The Angelus’ in 1859, but all this time Millet was harassed by money difficulties, and with a growing and increasing family he had a hard struggle for mere existence. His new pictures were not popular; not only did they fail to find purchasers, but they were often attacked because many of them were thought to be ‘socialistic’ and ‘The Gleaners’ was particularly abused on its first appearance as a work expressing subversive political principles. Millet and his family might have starved at this time, but for the good deeds stealthily done by his more fortunate comrades. In 1855 Rousseau secretly bought one of his pictures for £160, and Troyon also bought several of Millet’s works, pretending that he was acting for an American collector who had no real existence. By this tactful generoisity Millet was prevented from ever knowing how much he owed to the devotion of his friends.

The Romantic Movement In France (continued)