McClure\'s Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 written by Various

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[Illustration: STUDY FROM NATURE. BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co.]

[Illustration: MILLET'S COAT OF ARMS.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A facsimile of one of
the little drawings which Millet was accustomed to make for
acquaintances and collectors of autographs, and which he laughingly
called his "_armes parlantes_."]

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, DRAWN BY HIMSELF.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. Of this portrait, drawn
in 1847, Sensier, in his "Life" of Millet, says: "It is in crayon, and
life-sized. The head is melancholy, like that of Albert Duerer; the
profound regard is filled with intelligence and goodness."]

MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.

VOL. VI.

MAY, 1896.

No. 6.

A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET.--PARENTAGE AND EARLY INFLUENCES.--HIS LIFE AT
BARBIZON.--VISITS TO MILLET IN HIS STUDIO.--HIS PERSONAL
APPEARANCE.--HIS OWN COMMENTS ON HIS PICTURES.--PASSAGES FROM HIS
CONVERSATION.

BY WILL H. LOW.

These papers, disclaiming any other authority than that which appertains
to the conclusions of a practising painter who has thought deeply on the
subject of his art, have nevertheless avoided the personal equation as
much as possible. A conscientious endeavor has been made to consider the
work of each painter in the place which has been assigned him by the
concensus of opinion in the time which has elapsed since his work was
done. In the consideration of Jean Francois Millet, however, I desire
for the nonce to become less impersonal, for the reason that it was my
privilege to know him slightly, and in the case of one who as a man and
as a painter occupies a place so entirely his own, the value of recorded
personal impressions is greater, at least for purposes of record, than
the registration of contemporary opinion concerning him.

I must further explain that, as a young student who received at his
hands the kindly reception which the master, stricken in health, and
preoccupied with his work, vouchsafed, I could only know him
superficially. It may have been the spectacle of youthful enthusiasm, or
the modest though dignified recognition of the reverence with which I
approached him, that made this grave man unbend; but it is certain that
the few times when I was permitted to enter the rudely built studio at
Barbizon have remained red-letter days in my life, and on each occasion
I left Millet with an impression so strong and vital that now, after a
lapse of twenty years, the work which he showed me, and the words which
he uttered, are as present as though it all had occurred yesterday. The
reverence which I then felt for this great man was born of his works, a
few of which I had seen in 1873 in Paris; and their constant study, and
the knowledge of his life and character gained since then, have
intensified this feeling.

[Illustration: THE SHEEP-SHEARERS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
MILLET.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A replica of Millet's
picture in the Salon of 1861, which is now owned by Mr. Quincy Shaw,
Boston, Massachusetts. Charles Jacque, who had quarrelled with Millet,
after seeing this picture, went to him and said: "We cannot be friends;
but I have come to say that you have painted a masterpiece."]

Jean Francois Millet was born October 4, 1814, in the hamlet of Gruchy,
a mere handful of houses which lie in a valley descending to the sea, in
the department of the Manche, not far from Cherbourg. He was the
descendant of a class which has no counterpart in England or America,
and which in his native France has all but disappeared. The rude
forefathers of our country may have in a degree resembled the French
peasant of Millet's youth; but their Protestant belief made them more
independent in thought, and the problems of a new country, and the lack
of stability inherent to the colonist, robbed them of the fanatical love
of the earth, which is perhaps the strongest trait of the peasant. Every
inch of the ground up to the cliffs above the sea, in Millet's country,
represented the struggle of man with nature; and each parcel of land,
every stone in the walls which kept the earth from being engulfed in the
floods beneath, bore marks of his handiwork. Small wonder, then, that
this rude people should engender the painter who has best expressed the
intimate relation between the man of the fields and his ally and foe,
the land which he subjugates, and which in turn enslaves him. The
inherent, almost savage, independence of the peasant had kept him freer
and of a nobler type than the English yokel even in the time before the
Revolution, and in the little hamlet where Millet was born, the great
upheaval had meant but little. Remote from the capital, cultivating land
which but for their efforts would have been abandoned as worthless,
every man was a land-owner in a small degree, and the patrimony of
Millet sufficed for a numerous family of which he was the eldest son.
Sufficed, that is, for a Spartan subsistence, made up of unrelaxing
toil, with few or no comforts, save those of a spiritual nature which
came in the guise of religion.

[Illustration: PEASANT REPOSING. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
MILLET, EXHIBITED IN THE SALON OF 1863.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. This picture, popularly
known as "The man with the hoe," was the cause of much discussion at the
time of its exhibition. Millet was accused of socialism; of inciting the
peasants to revolt; and from his quiet retreat in the country, he
defended himself in a letter to his friend Sensier as follows: "I see
very clearly the aureole encircling the head of the daisy, and the sun
which glows beyond, far, far over the country-side, its glory in the
skies; I see, not less clearly, the smoking plough-horses in the plain,
and in a rocky corner a man bent with labor, who groans as he works, or
who for an instant tries to straighten himself to catch his breath. The
drama is enveloped in splendor. This is not of my creation; the
expression, 'the cry of the earth,' was invented long ago."]

Millet was reared by his grandmother, such being the custom of the
country; the younger women being occupied in the service of the
mastering earth, and the elders, no longer able to go afield, bringing
up the children born to their children, who in turn replaced their
parents in the never-ending struggle. This grandmother, Louise Jumelin,
widow of Nicolas Millet, was a woman of great force of character, and
extremely devout. The most ordinary occupation of the day was made the
subject not of uttered prayer, for that would have entailed suspension
of her ceaseless activity, but of spiritual example tersely expressed,
which fell upon the fruitful soil of Millet's young imagination, and
left such a lasting impression that to the end of his life his natural
expression was almost Biblical in character of language.

Another formative influence of this young life was that of a granduncle,
Charles Millet, a priest who, driven from his church by the Revolution,
had returned to his native village and taken up the simple life of his
people, without, however, abandoning his vocation. He was to be seen
behind his plough, his priest's robe gathered up about his loins, his
breviary in one hand, following the furrow up and down the undulating
fields which ran to the cliffs.

[Illustration: THE MILK-CARRIER. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
MILLET.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. Probably commenced at
Cherbourg, where Millet took refuge with his family during the
Franco-Prussian War, as Sensier mentions it on Millet's return. This
picture, or a replica of it (Millet was fond of repeating his subjects,
with slight changes in each case), was in his studio in 1873, and called
forth the remark quoted in the text, about the women in his country.]

Gifted with great strength, he piled up great masses of granite, to
reclaim a precious morsel of earth from the hungry maw of the sea;
lifting his voice, as he worked, in resonant chants of the church. He it
was who taught Millet to read; and, later, it was another priest, the
Abbe Jean Lebrisseux, who, in the intervals of the youth's work in the
fields, where he had early become an efficient aid to his father,
continued his instruction. With the avidity of intelligence Millet
profited by this instruction, not only in the more ordinary studies, but
in Latin, with the Bible and Virgil as text-books. His mind was also
nourished by the books belonging to the scanty library of his
granduncle. These were of a purely religious character--the "History of
the Saints," the "Confessions" of St. Augustine, the letters of St.
Jerome, and the works of Bossuet and Fenelon.

[Illustration: THE GLEANERS. FROM A PAINTING IN THE LOUVRE, BY JEAN
FRANCOIS MILLET, EXHIBITED IN THE SALON OF 1857.

"The three fates of pauperism" was the disdainful appreciation of Paul
de Saint-Victor on the first exhibition of this picture, while Edmond
About wrote: "The picture attracts one from afar by its air of grandeur
and serenity. It has the character of a religious painting. It is drawn
without fault, and colored without crudity; and one feels the August sun
which ripens the wheat." Sensier says: "The picture sold with difficulty
for four hundred dollars. What is it worth to-day?"]

In his father, whose strongest characteristic was an intense love of
nature, Millet found an unconscious influence in the direction which his
life was to follow. Millet recalled in after life that he would show him
a blade of grass or a flower, and say: "See how beautiful; how the
petals overlap; and the tree there, how strong and fine it is!" It was
his father who was attentive to the youth's first rude efforts, and who
encouraged him when the decisive step was to be taken, which Millet,
feeling that his labor in the fields was necessary to the common good of
the family, hesitated to take. The boy was in his eighteenth year when
his father said:

"My poor Francois, you are tormented between your desire to be an artist
and your duty to the family. Now that your brothers are growing, they
can take their turn in the fields. I have long wished that you could be
instructed in the craft of the painter, which I am told is so noble, and
we will go to Cherbourg and see what can be done."

[Illustration: THE ANGELES, MILLET'S MOST FAMOUS PICTURE.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. Despite its fame, this
is distinctly not Millet's masterpiece. During his life it sold for
about ten thousand dollars, and later for one hundred and fifty
thousand.]

Thus encouraged, the boy made two drawings--one of two shepherds in
blouse and _sabots_, one listening while the other played a rustic
flute; and a second where, under a starlit sky, a man came from out a
house, carrying bread for a mendicant at his gate. Armed with these two
designs--typical of the work which in the end, after being led astray by
schools and popular taste, he was to do--the two peasants sought a local
painter named Mouchel at Cherbourg. After a moment of doubt as to the
originality of the youth's work, Mouchel offered to teach him all that
he knew.

Millet stayed with Mouchel some months. Then his father's death recalled
him home, where his honest spirit prompted him to remain as the eldest
son and head of the family, although his heart was less than ever in the
fields. But this the mother, brought up in the spirit of resignation,
would not allow him to do. "God has made you a painter. His will be
done. Your father, my Jean Louis, has said it was to be, and you must
return to Cherbourg."

Millet returned to Cherbourg, this time to the studio of one Langlois, a
pupil of Gros, who was the principal painter of the little city. But
Langlois, like his first master, Mouchel, kept him at work copying
either his own studies or pictures in the city museum. After a few
months, though, he had the honesty to recognize that his pupil needed
more efficient instruction than he could give him, and in August, 1836,
he addressed a petition to the mayor and common council of the city of
Cherbourg, who took the matter into consideration, and, with the
authorities of the department, voted a sum of one thousand francs--two
hundred dollars--as a yearly allowance to Millet, in order that he might
pursue his studies in Paris. Langlois in his petition asks that he be
permitted to "raise without fear the veil of the future, and to assure
the municipal council a place in the memory of the world for having been
the first to endow their country with one more great name."
Grandiloquent promise has often been made without result; but one must
admire the hard-headed Norman councillors who, representing a little
provincial city which in 1884 had but thirty-six thousand inhabitants,
gave even this modest sum to assure a future to one who might reflect
honor on his country.

[Illustration: NESTLINGS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, IN
THE MUSEUM AT LILLE.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A notable instance of
the scope of Millet's power, as tender in depicting children as it is
austere in "The Gleaners."]

With a portion, of this allowance, and a small addition from the
"economies" of his mother and grandmother, Millet went to Paris in 1837.
The great city failed to please the country-bred youth, and, indeed,
until the end of his life, Millet disliked Paris. I remember his saying
that, on his visits from Barbizon to the capital, he was happy on his
arrival at the station, but when he arrived at the column of the
Bastille, a few squares within the city, the _mal du pays_ took him
by the throat.

At first he spent all his time in the Louvre, which revealed to him what
the little provincial museum of Cherbourg had but faintly suggested.
Before long, however, he entered the studio of Paul Delaroche, who was
the popular master of the time. There he won the sobriquet of the "man
of the woods," from a savage taciturnity which was his defence in the
midst of the _atelier_ jokes. He had come to work, and to work he
addressed himself, with but little encouragement from master or
comrades. Strong as a young Hercules, with a dignity which never forsook
him, his studies won at least the success of attention. When a favorite
pupil of the master remonstrated that his men and women were hewed from
stone, Millet replied tranquilly, "I came here because there are Greek
statues and living men and women to study from, not to please you or any
one. Do I preoccupy myself with your figures made of honey and butter?"

Delaroche, won by the strength of the man, at length unbent, and showed
him such favor as a commonplace mind could accord to native superiority.
He advised him to compete for the Prix de Rome, warning him, however,
that whatever might be the merit of his work, he could not take it that
year, as it was arranged that another, approaching the limit of age,
must have it. This revolted the simple nature of Millet, who refused to
compete, and left the school.

A return to Cherbourg, where he married his first wife, who died at the
end of two years; another sojourn in Paris, and a visit home of some
duration; a number of portraits and pictures painted in Cherbourg and
Havre, in which his talent was slowly asserting itself, brings us to
1845, when he remarried. Returning to Paris with his wife, he remained
there until 1849, when he went to Barbizon "for a time," which was
prolonged to twenty-seven years.

In all the years preceding his final return to the country, Millet was
apparently undecided as to the definite character of his work. Out of
place in a city, more or less influenced by his comrades in art, and
forced to follow in a degree the dictation of necessity in the choice of
subject, as his brush was his only resource and his family constantly
increasing, his work of this period is always tentative. In painting it
is luscious in color and firmly drawn and modelled, but it lacks the
perception of truth which, when once released from the bondage of the
city, began to manifest itself in his work. The first indication of the
future Millet is in a picture in the Salon of 1848, "The Winnower,"
which has, in subject at least, much the character of the work which
followed his establishment at Barbizon. For the rest, although the world
is richer in beautiful pictures of charmingly painted nymphs, and of
rustic scenes not altogether devoid of a certain artificiality, and in
at least one masterly mythological picture of Oedipus rescued from the
tree, through Millet's activity in these years, yet his work, had it
continued on this plane, would have lacked the high significance which
the next twenty-five years were to show.

Having endeavored to make clear the source from which Millet came, and
indicated the formative influences of his early life, I may permit
myself (as I warned my readers I should do) to return to my
recollections of Barbizon in 1873, and the glimpses of Millet which my
sojourn there in that and the following year afforded me.

Barbizon lies on a plain, more vast in the impression which it makes on
the eye than in actual area, and the village consists of one long
street, which commences at a group of farm buildings of some importance,
and ends in the forest of Fontainebleau. About midway down this street,
on the way to the forest, Millet's home stood, on the right of the road.
The house, of two low stories, had its gable to the street, and on the
first floor, with the window breast high from the ground, was the
dining-room. Here, in pleasant weather, with the window wide open, sat
Millet at the head of his patriarchal table, his children, of whom there
were nine, about him; his good wife, their days of acute misery past,
smiling contentedly on her brood, which, if I remember rightly, already
counted a grandchild or more: as pleasant a sight as one could readily
see. Later, in the autumn evenings, a lamplit replica of the same
picture presented itself. Or, if the dinner was cleared away, one would
see Madame Millet busy with her needle, the children at their lessons,
and the painter, whom even then tradition painted a sad and cheerless
misanthrope, contentedly playing at dominoes with one of the children,
or his honest Norman face wreathed in smiles as the conversation took an
amusing turn. This, it is true, was when the master of the house was
free from his terrible enemy, the headache, which laid him low so often,
and which in these days became more and more frequent.

[Illustration: FIRST STEPS. FROM A PASTEL BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. As Sensier remarks,
Millet, with nine children, had abundant opportunity to study them. This
charming drawing was one of the collection of Millet's pastels formed by
M. Gavet, which was unfortunately dispersed by auction soon after the
artist's death.]

The house, to resume the description of Millet's home, went back at
right angles from the street, and contained the various apartments of
the family, many of them on the ground floor, and all of the most modest
character. It was a source of wonder how so large a family could inhabit
so small a house. The garden lay in front, and extended back of the
house. A high wall with a little door, painted green, by which you
entered, ran along the street, and ended at the studio, which was, like
the dining-room, on the street. The garden was pleasant with flowers and
trees, the kitchen garden being at the rear. But a few short years ago,
within its walls Madame Millet plucked a red rose, and gave it to me,
saying: "My husband planted this." Outside the little green door, on
either hand, were stone benches set against the wall, on which the
painter's children sometimes sat and played; but it is somewhat strange
that I never remember Millet at his door or on the village street. He
walked a great deal, but always went out of the garden to the fields
back of the house, and from there gained the forest or the plain. Among
the young painters who frequented Barbizon in those days (which were,
however, long after the time when the men of Millet's age established
themselves there), there were, strange as it may seem, few who cared for
Millet's work, and many who knew little or nothing of it. The prejudices
of the average art student are many and indurated. His horizon is apt to
be bounded by his master's work or the last Salon success, and as Millet
had no pupils, and had ceased to exhibit at the Salon, he was little
known to most of the youths who, as I look back, must have made Barbizon
a most undesirable place for a quiet family to live in. An accident
which made me acquainted with Millet's eldest son, a painter of talent,
seemed for a time to bring me no nearer to knowing the father until one
day some remark of mine which showed at least a sincere admiration for
his work made the son suggest that I should come and see a recently
completed picture.

If the crowd of young painters who frequented the village were
indifferent to Millet, such was not the case with people from other
places. The "personally conducted" were then newly invented, and I have
seen a wagon load of tourists, who had been driven to different points
in the forest, draw up before Millet's modest door and express
indignation in a variety of languages when they were refused admittance.
There were many in those days who tried with little or no excuse to
break in on the work of a man whose working days were already counted,
and who was seldom free from his old enemy _migraine_. I was to
learn this when--I hope after having had the grace to make it plain
that, though I greatly desired to know Millet, I felt no desire to
intrude--the son had arranged for a day when, at last, I was admitted to
the studio.

Millet did not make his appearance at once; and when he came, and the
son had said a few kindly words of presentation, he seemed so evidently
in pain that I managed, in a French which must have been distinguished
by a pure New York accent and a vocabulary more than limited, to express
a fear that he was suffering, and suggested that my visit had better be
deferred.

"No, it will pass," was his answer; and going to his easel he placed,
with the help of his son, picture after picture, for my delectation.

It was Millet's habit to commence a great number of pictures. On some of
them he would work as long, according to his own expression, as he saw
the scene in nature before him; for, at least at this epoch, he never
painted directly from nature. For a picture which I saw the following
summer, where three great hay-stacks project their mass against a heavy
storm cloud, the shepherd seeking shelter from the impending rain, and
the sheep erring here and there, affected by the changing weather--for
this picture, conveying, as it did, the most intense impression of
nature, Millet showed me (in answer to my inquiry and in explanation of
his method of work) in a little sketch-book, so small that it would slip
into a waistcoat pocket, the pencilled outline of the three hay-stacks.
"It was a stormy day," he said, "and on my return home I sat down and
commenced the picture, but of direct studies--_voila tout_." Of
another picture, now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, of a young girl,
life size, with a distaff, seated on a hillock, her head shaded by a
great straw hat relieved against the sky, he told me that the only
direct painting from nature on the canvas was in a bunch of grass in the
foreground, which he had plucked in the fields and brought into his
studio.

[Illustration: THE SOWER. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET.

From the original painting, now in the collection of Mrs. W.H.
Vanderbilt; reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. In his
criticism of the Salon of 1850, where the picture was first exhibited,
Theophile Gautier thus described it: "The sower advances with rhythmic
step, casting the seed into the furrowed land; sombre rags cover him; a
formless hat is drawn down over his brow; he is gaunt, cadaverous, and
thin under his livery of misery; and yet life is contained in his large
hand, as with a superb gesture he who has nothing scatters broadcast on
the earth the bread of the future."]

On this first day, it would be difficult to say how many pictures in
various states of advancement I saw. The master would occasionally say,
reflectively: "It is six months since I looked at that, and I must get
to work at it," as some new canvas was placed on the easel. At first,
fearing that he was too ill to have me stay, I made one or two motions
to leave. But each time, with a kindly smile, I was bidden to stay, with
the assurance that the headache was "going better." After a time I quite
forgot everything in enthusiasm at what I saw and the sense that I was
enjoying the privilege of a lifetime. The life of the fields seemed to
be unrolled before me like some vast panorama. Millet's comments were
short and descriptive of what he aimed to represent, seldom or never
concerning the method of his work. "Women in my country," meaning Lower
Normandy, of course, "carry jars of milk in that way," he said,
indicating the woman crossing the fields with the milk-can supported by
a strap on her shoulder. "When I was a boy there were great flights of
wild pigeons which settled in the trees at night, when we used to go
with torches, and the birds, blinded by the light, could be killed by
the hundred with clubs," was his explanation of another scene full of
the confusion of lights and the whirr of the bewildered pigeons.

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