Bird’s-Nesters (1874)

Jean-François Millet: Bird’s-Nesters

This haunting and strange picture--brutishly literal yet terrifyingly generic--is the final painting by Jean-François Millet, a remarkable last testament by one of the most profound artists of the nineteenth century. He drew on his own boyhood experiences in depicting the subject of bird's-nesters, who would hunt great flocks of pigeons at night by blinding them with torchlight and then clubbing them to death. By the 1870s Millet's paintings of rural life were among the most famous in France. His subjects are nearly all drawn from the peasantry, done just as the countryside was being depopulated by immigration to the new industrial centers. But unlike many other artists who worked in the very popular specialty of "peasant painting," Millet's great genius was his ability to bond his subjects to their native place while simultaneously elevating them to a level of universal humanity. Much of his success was based on his evocation of a communal memory of a lost rural world that was either arcadian or pathetic or a combination of both. [Joseph J. Rishel, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 197.]

The Goosegirl (1866-67)

Jean-François Millet: The Goosegirl

Knitting Lesson (ca. 1860)

Jean-François Millet: Knitting Lesson

The Angelus (1859)

Jean-François Millet: The Angelus

The painting depicts two peasants bowing in a field over a basket of potatoes to say a prayer, the Angelus, that together with the ringing of the bell from the church on the horizon marks the end of a day's work.

It shows two peasants during the potato harvest in Barbizon, with a view of the church tower of Chailly-en-Bière. At their feet is a small basket of potatoes, and around them a cart and a pitchfork. Various interpretations of the relationship between the two peasants have been made, such as colleagues at work, husband and wife pair, or (as Gambetta interpreted it) farmer and maidservant. Salvador Dalí insisted that this was a funeral scene, not a prayer ritual and that the couple were portrayed praying and mourning over their dead infant. Although this was an unpopular view, at his insistence the Louvre X-rayed the painting, showing a small coffin over-painted by the basket. [Wikipedia]

The Gleaners (1857)

Jean-François Millet: The Gleaners

Millet first unveiled The Gleaners at the Salon in 1857. It immediately drew negative criticism from the middle and upper classes, who viewed the topic with suspicion: one art critic, speaking for other Parisians, perceived in it an alarming intimation of "the scaffolds of 1793." Having recently come out of the French Revolution of 1848, these prosperous classes saw the painting as glorifying the lower-class worker. To them, it was a reminder that French society was built upon the labor of the working masses, and landowners linked this working class with the growing movement of Socialism. The depiction of the working class in The Gleaners made the upper classes feel uneasy about their status. The masses of workers drastically outnumbered the members of the upper class. The drastic differences in numbers meant that if the lower class was to revolt the upper class would be overturned. With the French Revolution still fresh on the upper class' minds, this painting was not perceived well at all.

Millet's The Gleaners was also not perceived well due to its enormous size. The size of the painting is 33 inches by 44 inches or 2.75 feet by 3.7 feet. This is huge for a painting depicting labor. Normally this size of a canvas was reserved for religious or mythological style paintings. Millet's work did not depict anything religiously affiliated, nor was there any reference to any mythological beliefs. The painting illustrated a realistic view of poverty and the working class. One critic commented that "his three gleaners have gigantic pretensions, they pose as the Three Fates of Poverty…their ugliness and their grossness unrelieved." While the act of gleaning was not a new topic—representations of Ruth had existed in art—this new work was a statement on rural poverty and not Biblical piety: there is no touch of the Biblical sense of community and compassion in the contrasting embodiments of grinding poverty in the foreground and the rich harvest in the sunlit distance beyond. The implicit irony was unsettling. [Wikipedia]

[More on the painting from Musée d'Orsay] [Video commentary on the painting]

Shepherdess seated on a rock (1856)

Jean-François Millet: Shepherdess seated on a rock

The Potato Harvest (1855)

Jean-François Millet: The Potato Harvest

Seated Spinner (1854)

Jean-François Millet: Seated Spinner

The Sower (1850)

Jean-François Millet: The Sower

 

Millet's 1850 piece "The Sower", which has come to be associated with the Social Realist movement, shows a peasant man striding through a plot of freshly tilled soil as he sows his crops. The sun shines in the top half of the painting just over the horizon to show that the peasant has risen at the crack of dawn in order to accomplish the day's work that lies ahead.

The painting is characterized as a Social Realist work because of its focus and subject matter, and additionally due to the manner in which the work is portrayed. Millet breaks from the traditional academic route with "The Sower" and it shows in his dark and muddy earth tones. Rather than idealizing the peasant man or ignoring him entirely, Millet portrays the peasant as a stocky, well-built young man wearing simple, practical peasant clothing.

When "The Sower" is looked at in light of its Social Realist associations, a whole new realm of icons and meanings can be grasped. The Sower himself or the peasant can be viewed as a sewer of social justice, a representative of the lower classes fighting for social mobility by sowing the seeds of protest and dissent. A bright sun is rising behind the peasant man indicating that the sower has the forces of social justice on his side. The sun rise can also be interpreted as a symbol of change, in the Social Realist sense; this would mark the change from the bourgeoisie middle class dominance of the capital industrial era in France to one of socialist enlightenment. [hoocher.com]

Retreat from the Storm (ca. 1846)

Jean-François Millet: Retreat from the Storm

Millet (1814-1875) was one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. He is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers; he can be categorized as part of the Realism art movement.