French artist Jean Francois Millet. Brief biography of Jean-Francois Millet. Man with a hoe

Although his works are of extreme importance in art for all artistic movements. He painted genre compositions, landscapes, and created several portraits. Millet's painting "The Sower" inspired Van Gogh to create his own compositions on a similar theme. And his “Angelus” was his favorite painting, a prominent representative of surrealism. Then he turned to the images of “Angelus” all his life.

1. Biography. Childhood

Born in the village of Grushi, near the city of Cherbourg, on the banks of the English Channel. He learned to read and write at a school at a rural church. Like all peasant children, he helped the family a lot in the field. Later he would write: “The nature of this region left indelible impressions on my soul, because it retained such an original creation that I sometimes felt like a contemporary of Bruegel (meaning Pieter Bruegel the Old, an outstanding artist from the Netherlands of the 16th century) ".

2. Study in Cherbourg

Noticing the talent in the child, the parents did everything possible to get their son out of the village. He was sent to Cherbourg, where he was placed in the studio of the artist Moshel, a local portrait painter. Francois's successes led him to another workshop with the artist Langlois. He believed so much in the student, who received a scholarship for him from the Municipality of Cherbourg and the right to study in Paris. So the former hillbilly moved to the capital.

Once upon a time, his grandmother bequeathed him not to draw anything shameful, even when the king himself asked for it. The grandson fulfilled his grandmother’s will - and did a lot of useful things for the art of France, and the whole world.

3. Portraits of Francois Millet

By his first specialty he is a portrait painter. He started and painted portraits. But I felt dissatisfied. In addition, in Paris he studied with the historical painter Delaroche. He felt no pleasure either from Delaroche or from the Paris of that time. And so, because Paris is a desert for the poor. He rested his soul in the Louvre Museum, because he needed to gain experience that no one could give him except the old masters of art.

Polina Ono is the artist's wife. They got married in . Four years later, Polina will die of consumption (tuberculosis). Not everything was all right with the paintings - no one bought them. The artist lived on money from commissioned portraits.

4. Barbizon village

We didn’t go there for inspiration. It was simply cheap to live there and it was not far from Paris. The village is located in the Fontainebleau forest. Millet remembered that the peasant worked the land in Barbizon, like his father, and in rare free hours he painted pictures. They are selling little by little. And even the Minister of Internal Affairs purchased one at a price ten times higher than the artist’s price.

But the number of outstanding landscape painters here was so large that the village became famous throughout the world. Millet also painted landscapes. And I felt that I was becoming a master, unlike anyone else. And in art this, after ability and efficiency, is the main thing.

Among foreign artists, Millet was friends with the English virtuoso Frederic Leighton, although remaining unlike him in no way.

5. Landscapes of Millais

6. Rural France 19th century

7. Gatherers of brushwood. Little masterpiece

In the Mill it is almost impossible to find large paintings: the length of the famous painting “Angelus” is 66 cm, “The Ear Gatherers” is 111 cm, “Rest at the Harvest” is 116 cm. And these seem to be the most.

The “gatherer of brushwood” also became a small masterpiece, only 37 by 45 cm. No one had ever painted French women like this. Two figures are trying to remove dry wood that is stuck. The work that would be worthy for livestock is done by two peasant women themselves, without waiting for help. This is a scary world where you simply can’t wait for help.

The researchers were surprised - there was no spectacular composition, no bright colors. No one gets killed and no one screams. And the audience clutched their hearts. Millet turned the face of bourgeois society to the people, to the excessive labor of the peasants, to sympathy for those who worked hard and terribly on the land. He converted society (and the art of France) to humanism. And this covered both the small size of Millet’s paintings and the lack of coloristic treasures, theatrical gestures, screams, etc. The bitter truth of today returned to art.

His call has been heard. Milla became an authority on painting. And as always, some shouted about his politicization, others saw in him exclusivity, a phenomenon. His paintings began to sell well.

Once upon a time, Tretyakov acquired “brushwood pickers”. No, not Pavel, he bought and supported Russian artists, and then gave Moscow a gallery bearing his name. Pavel's brother Sergei Tretyakov acquired it and collected works by European artists. Usually he sent money to his agent in Paris, and he, at his discretion, saw something worthy, bought it and sent it to Moscow. Both discretion and the purchase turned out to be very successful. In Moscow, this is almost the only (except for another landscape) subject painting by Millet. But it is a masterpiece.

8. Two recognized masterpieces: "Angelus" and "The Ear Gatherer"

9. Millet's etchings

Millet is one of the masters who turned to creating engravings. This was not the main thing in his work, so he made several experiments in different techniques: six lithographs, two heliographs, six woodcuts. In total he worked in the etching technique. Among them there are both repetitions of his paintings (the etching “The Ear Gatherer”), and quite independent subjects. The etching “Death Takes the Peasant Woodcutter” was extremely successful, which was reminiscent of the 16th century German master Hans Holbein’s masterpiece from the “Dance of Death” series with its high artistic quality.

Millet long time I was looking for a composition. The Louvre Museum preserves two drawings by Francois Millet with the first search for composition. Another drawing ended up in the Hermitage in 1929. The composition of the latter formed the basis of both an etching and a painting on the same theme (New Carlsberg Glypkothek, Copenhagen).

10. Countries where Millet's works are stored

Sources

Dario Durb?, Anna M. Damigella: Corot und die Schule von Barbizon. Pawlak, Herrsching 1988, ISBN 3-88199-430-0
Andr? Ferigier: Jean-François Millet. Die Entdecung des 19. Jahrhunderts. Skira-Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-88447-047-7
Ingrid Hessler: Jean-François Millet. Landschaftsdarstellung als Medium individueller Religiosit?t. Dissertation, Universit?t M?nchen 1983
Estelle M. Hurll: Jean François Millet. A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the Painter, with Introduction and Interpretation, New Bedford, MA, 1900. ISBN 1-4142-4081-3
Lucien Lepoittevin: Jean Fran?ois Millet - Au-del? de l"Ang?lus. Editions de Monza. Paris 2002, ISBN 978-2-908071-93-1
Lucien Lepoittevin: Jean François Millet - Images et Symboles.?ditions ISO?TE Cherbourg 1990, ISBN 2-905385-32-4
Alexandra R. Murphy (Hrsg.): Jean-Fran?ois Millet, drawn into the light. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. 1999, ISBN 0-87846-237-6
Alfred Sensier: La vie et l"?uvre de Jean-Fran?ois Millet. Editions des Champs, Bricqueboscq 2005, ISBN 2-910138-17-8 (neue Auflage des Werks von 1881)
Andrea Meyer: Deutschland und Millet. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin und M?nchen 2009. ISBN 978-3-422-06855-1
One hundred etchings of the 16th-19th centuries from the collection of the State Hermitage. Leningrad, 1964 (Russian)
Pushkin Museum, catalog of art gallery, M, Fine Arts, 1986 (rus)

France has always been famous for its painters, sculptors, writers and other artists. The heyday of painting in this European country occurred in the 17th-19th centuries.

One of the brightest representatives of French fine art is Jean Francois Millet, who specialized in creating paintings of rural life and landscapes. This is very bright representative his genre, the paintings of which are still highly valued.

Jean Francois Millet: biography

The future painter was born on October 4, 1814 near the city of Cherbourg, in a tiny village called Grushi. Although his family was a peasant family, they lived quite prosperously.

Even at an early age, Jean began to show an ability for painting. A family where no one had previously had the opportunity to leave their native village and build a career in any field other than the peasantry, the son’s talent was perceived with great enthusiasm.

His parents supported the young man in his desire to study painting and paid for his education. In 1837, Jean Francois Millet moved to Paris, where for two years he mastered the basics of painting. His mentor is Paul Delaroche.

Already in 1840, the aspiring artist demonstrated his paintings for the first time in one of the salons. At that time, this could already be perceived as a considerable success, especially for a young painter.

Creative activity

Jean François Millet did not like Paris too much, who yearned for the countryside landscapes and way of life. Therefore, in 1849, he decided to leave the capital, moving to Barbizon, which was much calmer and more comfortable than noisy Paris.

Here the artist lived the rest of his life. He considered himself a peasant, which is why he was drawn to the village.

That is why his work is dominated by scenes of peasant life and rural landscapes. He not only understood and empathized with ordinary farmers and shepherds, but he himself was part of this class.

He, like no one else, knew how hard it was for ordinary people, how difficult their work was and what a miserable lifestyle they led. He admired these people, of whom he considered himself a part.

Jean Francois Millet: works

The artist was very talented and hardworking. During his life, he created many paintings, many of which are today considered true masterpieces of the genre. One of the most famous creations of Jean Francois Millet is “The Ear Pickers” (1857). The painting became famous for reflecting all the heaviness, poverty and hopelessness of ordinary peasants.

It depicts women bent over ears of grain, because otherwise they cannot collect the remains of the harvest. Despite the fact that the picture demonstrated the realities of peasant life, it aroused mixed feelings among the public. Some considered it a masterpiece, while others spoke sharply negatively. Because of this, the artist decided to soften his style a little, demonstrating the more aesthetic aspects of village life.

The canvas "Angelus" (1859) demonstrates the talent of Jean Francois Millet in all its glory. The painting depicts two people (husband and wife) who, in the evening twilight, pray for people who have left this world. The soft brownish halftones of the landscape and the rays of the setting sun give the picture a special warmth and comfort.

In the same 1859, Millet painted the painting “Peasant Woman Herding a Cow,” which was created by special order from the French government.

At the end of his creative path Jean Francois Millet began to pay more and more attention to landscapes. Everyday genre faded into the background. Perhaps he was influenced by the Barbizon school of painting.

In literary works

Jean François Millet became one of the heroes of the story “Is He Alive or Dead?”, written by Mark Twain. According to the plot, several artists decided to embark on an adventure. Poverty pushed them to do this. They decide that one of them will fake his death, having thoroughly publicized it beforehand. After his death, prices for the artist’s paintings will have to skyrocket in price, and there will be enough for everyone to live on. It was Francois Millet who became the one who played his own death. Moreover, the artist personally was one of those who carried his own coffin. They achieved their goal.

This story also became the basis for the dramatic work “Talents and Dead Men,” which is now shown at the Moscow Theater. A. S. Pushkin.

Contribution to culture

The artist had a huge influence on French and world painting in general. His paintings are highly valued today, and many are exhibited in major museums and galleries in Europe and the world.

Today he is considered one of the most outstanding representatives of the everyday rural genre and a magnificent landscape painter. He has a lot of followers, and many artists working in a similar genre are one way or another guided by his works.

The painter is rightfully considered the pride of his homeland, and his paintings are the property of national art.

Conclusion

Jean François Millet, whose paintings are true masterpieces of painting, made an invaluable contribution to European painting and world art. He rightfully stands on a par with the greatest artists. Although he did not become the founder of a new style, did not experiment with technology and did not seek to shock the public, his paintings revealed the essence of peasant life, demonstrating all the hardships and joys of the life of village people without embellishment.

Such frankness in canvases, sensuality and truthfulness can not be found in every painter, even famous and eminent ones. He simply painted pictures about what he saw with his own eyes, and not only saw, but felt himself. He grew up in this environment and knew peasant life inside out.

19th century French artist

Jean-Francois Millet (French: ; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French artist and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is famous for his scenes of peasants; it can be classified as part of the Realism art movement.

Life and work

the youth

Sheepfold. In this painting by Mill, the waning moon casts a mysterious light across the plain between the villages of Barbizon and Cham. Walters Art Museum.

Millet was the first child of Jean-Louis-Nicolas and Aimé-Henriette Adelaide Henry Mille, members of the rural community in the village of Gruchy, in Greville-The Hague (Normandy), near the coast. Under the guidance of two village priests—one of them was the vicar Jean Lebrisseux-Millet—he acquired a knowledge of Latin and modern authors. But soon he had to help his father with his farm job; because Millet was the eldest of the sons. Thus, all the farmer’s work was familiar to him: mowing, haying, tying sheaves, threshing, winnowing, spreading manure, plowing, sowing, etc. All these motifs would return in his later art. This stopped when he was 18 and sent by his father to Cherbourg in 1833 to study with a portrait painter named Paul Dumouchel. By 1835 he was studying full-time with Lucien-Théophile Langlois, a pupil of Baron Gros, in Cherbourg. A scholarship provided by Langlois and others allowed 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 salon submission was rejected.

Paris

After his first painting, a portrait, was accepted at the Salon of 1840, Millet returned to Cherbourg to begin a career as a portrait painter. However, in next year he married Pauline-Virginie Ono and they moved to Paris. After the culling at the Salon of 1843 and the death of Pauline by Consumption, Millet returned to Cherbourg again. In 1845, Millet moved to Le Havre with Catherine Lemaire, whom he would marry in a civil ceremony in 1853; they would have nine children and remain together for the rest of Millet's life. In Le Havre he painted portraits and small genre pieces for several months before moving back to Paris.

It was in Paris in the mid-1840s that Millet befriended Troyon, Narcisse Diaz, Charles Jacquet and Théodore Rousseau, artists who, like Mill, would become associated with the Barbizon school; Honoré Daumier, whose draftsmanship would influence Millet's subsequent rendering of peasant subjects; and Alfred Sensier, a government bureaucrat who would become a lifelong supporter and eventually the artist's biographer. In 1847, his first success came with a salon with an exhibition of paintings Oedipus was demolished from the tree, and in 1848 his winnower was purchased by the government.

Captivity of the Jews in Babylon, Mill's most ambitious work at the time, was opened at the Salon of 1848, but was despised by art critics and the public. The painting eventually disappeared soon after, leading historians believe that the Millets destroyed it. In 1984, scientists from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston x-rayed Millet's 1870 painting young shepherdess looking for minor changes and found that it had been painted over captivity. It is now believed that millet was re-canvased when materials were in short supply during the Franco-Prussian War.

Barbizon

In 1849, millet painted combines, commission for the state. At this year's salon, he showed Shepherd sitting on the edge of the forest, a very small oil painting that marked a departure from previous idealized pastoral subjects, in favor of a more realistic and individual approach. In June of the same year he settled in Barbizon with Catherine and the children.

In 1850, Millet entered into an agreement with Sensier, who provided the artist with materials and money in exchange for drawings and paintings, while Millet was simultaneously free to continue selling the work to other buyers as well. At this year's salon, he showed mower And sower, his first major masterpiece and the earliest of an iconic trio of paintings that would include harvester And Angelus .

From 1850 to 1853, Millet worked at Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz), paintings, he will consider it the most important, and on which he worked longer. Conceived to rival its heroes Michelangelo and Poussin, it is also a painting that marked its transition from depicting symbolic images of peasant life to that of modern social conditions. This was the only painting he had ever dated, and was the first work to earn him official recognition, a second class medal at the 1853 salon.

In Gleaners

This is one of Millet's most well known paintings, harvesters(1857). While the Millet was walking the field around Barbizon, one subject returned to her pencil and brush for seven years - picking up -The centuries-old right of poor women and children to remove bits of grain left in the fields after the harvest. He found a thematic timeless one related to stories from the Old Testament. In 1857 he introduced painting harvesters into the salon to Enthusiasm, even a hostile public.

(Earlier versions include a vertical composition, painted in 1854, in an etching of 1855-56, which directly foreshadows the horizontal format painting currently in the Musée d'Orsay.)

The warm golden light suggests something sacred and eternal in this everyday scene of a struggle for survival. Through years of preparatory research, Millet is considered to better convey the meaning of repetition and fatigue in Everyday life peasants Lines traced down each woman's back lead to the ground and then back again in a repetitive motion, identical to their never-ending, back-breaking labor. Along the horizon, the setting sun silhouettes a farm with its abundant stacks of grain, in contrast to the large shadowy figures in the foreground. The dark homespun dresses in Gleaners are cut into firm shapes against a golden field, giving each woman a noble, monumental strength.

Angelus

The painting was commissioned by Thomas Gold Appleton, an American art collector based in Boston, Massachusetts. Appleton had previously studied with another Mill, the Barbizon painter Troyon. It was completed during the summer of 1857. Millet added the bell tower and changed the original title of the work, Prayer for the potato harvest V Angelus when the buyer failed to take possession in 1859. Displayed to the public for the first time in 1865, the painting was changed several times, increasing only slightly in price, as some considered the artist's political sympathies to be suspect. After Mill's death ten years later, an auction war between the US and France ensued, ending a few years later with a price of 800,000 gold francs.

The discrepancy between the painting's apparent significance and the poor class of the surviving Millet family was a major impetus in the invention of the prerogative de luxe, intended to compensate artists or their heirs when works were resold.

Later years

Despite mixed reviews of the paintings he exhibited at the salon, Millet's reputation and success grew through the 1860s. Early in the decade, he contracted to paint 25 works in exchange for a monthly stipend for the next three years, and in 1865, another patron, Emile Gavet began introducing pastels for a collection that would eventually include 90 works. In 1867, the World's Fair hosted a major display of his work, with Gleaners , Angelus And potato planting among the paintings were exhibited. The following year, Frederick Hartmann commissioned Four Seasons for 25,000 francs, and Millet was named Chevalier de la Legion of Honor.

In 1870, Millet was elected to the jury of the Salon. Later that year, he and his family left the Franco-Prussian War, moving to Cherbourg and Greville and did not return to Barbizon until late 1871. last years financial success and increased official recognition were noted, but he was unable to fulfill government commissions due to deteriorating health. On January 3, 1875, he married Catherine in a religious ceremony. Millet died on January 20, 1875.

heritage

Millet was an important source of inspiration for Vincent van Gogh, especially in early period. Millet and his work are mentioned many times in Vincent's letters to his brother Theo. Millet's late landscapes would serve as influential points of reference to Claude Monet's paintings on the coast of Normandy; its structural and symbolic content is influenced by Georges Seurat as well.

Millet main character Mark Twain's plays He is dead?(1898), in which he is depicted as a struggling young artist who fakes his death to win fame and fortune. Most of the details about Mill in the game are fictitious.

Painting by Millet L"Homme la houe inspired the famous poem "The Man with the Hoe" (1898) by Edwin Markham. His poems also inspired the collection of American poet David Middleton The Habitual Peacefulness of Gruchy: Poems after a Photograph by Jean-François Millet (2005).

Angelus often reproduced in the 19th and 20th centuries. Salvador Dali was fascinated by this work, and wrote an analysis of it, The tragic myth of Angelus millet. Rather than viewing it as a work of the spiritual world, the Dalí believed that they carried messages about repressed sexual aggression. Dalí also believes that the two figures prayed for their child to be buried, and not for the Angelus. Dalí was so persistent in this that the eventual X-ray was made of canvas, confirming his suspicions: the painting contains a geometric shape painted on top that is strikingly similar to a coffin. However, it remains unclear whether Millet has changed his mind about the painting's meaning, or even if the shape is actually a coffin.

Gallery

paintings by Jean-Francois Millet

Going to work , 1851-53

Shepherd Bow His Flock, early 1860s

Potato planters , 1861

Goose Girl , 1863

Ciampa, Kermit S. The Rise of Landscape Painting in France: Corot to Monet. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991. ISBN
Honor, H. and Fleming, J. The World History arts. Seventh EDN. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2009. ISBN
Murphy, Alexander R. Mill. Museum fine arts, Boston, 1984. ISBN
Plaideux, Hugo. "L"après Inventaire décès et la DECLARATION de succession de Millet", in Revue de la Manche, vol. 53, FASC. 212, 2e trim. 2011, pp. 2-38.
Plaideux, Hugo. "Une ENSEIGNE de vétérinaire cherbourgeois peinte par Millet en 1841", in Bulletin de la Francaise d'Société Histoire de la Médecine et des sciences vétérinaires, n ° 11, 2011, pp. 61-75.
Lucien Lepoittevin. Catalog raisonné by Jean-François Millet en 2 volumes - Paris 1971/1973
Lucien Lepoitevin. "Le Viquet - Retour sur les Premiors pas: un Millet millet" - N ° 139 Pâques 2003 - ISSN 0764-7948
E Moreau-Nélaton - Monographie des references, Mille Raconte par lui-même- 3 volumes - Paris 1921
Lucien Lepoittevin. Jean François Millet (Au delà de l'Angelus)- Ed de Monza - 2002 - (ISBN)
L. Lepoittevin. Mill: Images and other Symboles, Editions Isoète Cherbourg 1990 (

Jean Francois Millet(Millet, 1814-1874) - French painter of rural life. The son of a peasant, he spent his youth among rural nature, helping his father with his farm and field work. Only at the age of 20 did he begin to study drawing in Cherbourg with little-known artists Mouchel and Langlois. On the advice of the latter and with the funds he had collected, he arrived in Paris in 1835, where he became an apprentice to P. Delaroche, but two years later he left his mentor and, having got married, began to earn money by depicting naked women in the spirit of Diaz, shepherdesses, shepherds or bathers in the taste of Boucher and Fragonard. The first paintings he exhibited in the Paris salon, “The Driving Lesson” (1844), “The Milkmaid” (1844), “Oedipus Tied to a Tree” (1845) and “The Jews in Babylonian Captivity” (1845), were no better than ordinary products the then dominant direction of French painting. But since 1848, he broke off all connection with this direction and, having moved from Paris to Barbizon, near Fontainebleau, almost never leaving there and even rarely coming to the capital, he devoted himself exclusively to reproducing rural scenes that were intimately familiar to him in his youth - peasants and peasant women. at various points in their working lives. His paintings of this kind, uncomplicated in composition, executed rather sketchily, without highlighting the particulars of the drawing and without writing out details, but attractive in their simplicity and unvarnished truth, imbued with sincere love for the working people, did not find due recognition among the public for a long time. He began to become famous only after the Paris World Exhibition of 1867, which brought him a large gold medal. From that time on, his reputation as a first-class artist who introduced a new, living current into French art quickly grew, so that at the end of Millet’s life, his paintings and drawings, for which he had once received very modest money, were already sold for tens of thousands of francs. After his death, speculation, taking advantage of the even more intensified fashion for his works, brought their price to fabulous proportions. So, in 1889, at the auction of the Secret's collection, his small painting: "Evening Good News" (Angelus) was sold to an American art partnership for an amount of over half a million francs. In addition to this picture, among Millet’s best works on subjects from peasant life are “The Sower”, “Watching Over a Sleeping Child”, “Sick Child”, “Newborn Lamb”, “Grafting a Tree”, “End of the Day”, “Threshing”, "Return to the Farm", "Spring" (in the Louvre Museum, Paris) and "The Ear Gatherers" (ibid.). In the Museum of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, among the paintings of the Kushelev Gallery, there is an example of Millet's painting - the painting "Return from the Forest".

I would like to invite you to look at reproductions of another great artist, Jean Francois Millet, a French painter of rural life. The son of a peasant, he spent his youth among rural nature, helping his father with his farm and field work. Only at the age of 20 did he begin to study drawing in Cherbourg with little-known artists Mouchel and Langlois.

Having moved from Paris to Barbizon, near Fontainebleau, almost never leaving there and even rarely coming to the capital, he devoted himself exclusively to reproducing rural scenes that were intimately familiar to him in his youth - peasants and peasant women at various moments in their working lives.

His paintings of this kind, uncomplicated in composition, executed rather sketchily, without highlighting the particulars of the drawing and without writing out details, but attractive in their simplicity and unvarnished truth, imbued with sincere love for the working people, did not find due recognition among the public for a long time.

He began to become famous only after the Paris World Exhibition of 1867, which brought him a large gold medal. From that time on, his reputation as a first-class artist who introduced a new, living current into French art quickly grew, so that at the end of Millet’s life, his paintings and drawings, for which he had once received very modest money, were already sold for tens of thousands of francs. After his death, speculation, taking advantage of the even more intensified fashion for his works, brought their price to fabulous proportions. So, in 1889, at the auction of the Secret's collection, his small painting: "Evening Good News" (Angelus) was sold to an American art partnership for an amount of over half a million francs. In addition to this picture, among Millet’s best works on subjects from peasant life are “The Sower”, “Watching Over a Sleeping Child”, “Sick Child”, “Newborn Lamb”, “Grafting a Tree”, “End of the Day”, “Threshing”, "Return to the Farm", "Spring" (in the Louvre Museum, Paris) and "The Ear Gatherers" (ibid.). In the Museum of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, among the paintings of the Kushelev Gallery, there is an example of Millet's painting - the painting "Return from the Forest".

Evening bell

On January 20, 1875, the artist, at the age of 60, died in Barbizon and was buried near the village of Chally, next to his friend Theodore Rousseau.
Millet never painted from life. He loved to walk through the forest and make small sketches, and then reproduce the motif he liked from memory. The artist selected colors for his paintings, striving not only to reliably reproduce the landscape, but also to achieve harmony of color.
His painterly skill and desire to show village life without embellishment put Jean François Millet on a par with the Barbizonis and realistic artists who worked in the second half of the 19th century.

On my own behalf, I would like to say that everything in his paintings is real...: life, people, nature is so beautiful... that you can smell the grass, rain and even the smells of human labor, diligence... He sees life, loves it... and enjoys his work, leaving for descendants moments of the life that the master himself lived.