1814–1875 · Realism. Wikipedia
Jean-François Millet was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realism art movement. Toward the end of his career, he became increasingly interested in painting pure landscapes. He is known best for his oil paintings but is also noted for his pastels, Conté crayon drawings, and etchings.
The Gleaners (Des glaneuses) is an oil painting by Jean-François Millet completed in 1857. It is held in the Musée d'Orsay, in Paris. It depicts three peasant women gleaning a field of stray stalks of wheat after the harvest. The painting is famous for featuring in a sympathetic way what were then the lowest ranks of rural society; it was received poorly by the French upper classes.
Shepherdess with her Flock is an oil-on-canvas painting by Jean-François Millet, created c. 1863. It is held in the Musee d'Orsay, in Paris. Millet expressed a desire to paint a work showing a shepherdess with her flock as early as 1862. As his friend Alfred Sensier related, this theme "obsessed the artist's mind" until he exhibited the work at the Paris Salon of 1864, where it was a great success, called a "refined canvas" by some and a "masterpiece" by others. It was particularly esteemed by the middle-classes in Paris, who preferred idealised paintings of rural life to caring about the hard life of real peasants.
The Potato Harvest is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Jean-François Millet, created in 1855. It is held at The Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore. Jean-François Millet was raised in the area of France known as the old province of Normandy. He was brought up with hard out-of-door labor. After studying to become a painter, he devoted his art to illustrating peasants farming the land. His subjects were often taken from his surroundings or from memories from his youth.
The Angelus (French: L'Angélus) is an oil painting by French painter Jean-François Millet, completed between 1857 and 1859. The painting depicts two peasants in a field bowing over a basket of potatoes, while saying a prayer, the Angelus. The prayer and the ringing of the church bell mark the end of a day's work. The church is depicted on the horizon.
The Sower is an oil painting by the French artist Jean-François Millet from 1850. It is one of several versions of the theme that he painted. The work has been in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston since 1917. Millet moved to Barbizon in 1849, a village in the Fontainebleau forest, outside Paris. There he was part of the artist group of the School of Barbizon, which painted subdued realistic landscapes and motifs in contrast to the traditional romantic dramatic landscape and painting. Millet was himself a farmer's son and described with dignity and seriousness the hard-working life of the rural population. His paintings have sometimes been perceived as sentimental. At the time, however, they were considered radical because of their social realism. Large-scale depiction of simple agricultural workers was new and controversial in the Paris' art establishment. Millet was often questioned for his "ugly" motifs.
The Winnower is the title of three oil on canvas paintings by French artist Jean-François Millet, created between 1847 and 1848. The first, now held at the National Gallery, in London, was painted in 1847-1848, and presented at the Salon of 1848. Subsequently, Millet created two other versions, one kept at the Louvre Museum, in Paris, much smaller than the original, and the other at the Musée d'Orsay, also in Paris. The first version of The Winnower was presented in the Grand Salon during the Salon of 1848, at the same time as The Captivity of the Jews of Babylon. If this work, as an history painting, was intended to attract buyers, the first marked Millet's entry into a new genre: the painting of peasant daily life. Indeed, with this representation of a winnower, Millet turns away from his literary and artistic references to offer works directly inspired by the peasant life, a vein that he will pursue from 1849 by settling in Barbizon. Furthermore Millet also produced at least two other versions of the work. The first, much smaller, is on display at the Louvre Museum, and the second is at the Musée d'Orsay.
Haystacks: Autumn is a c. 1874 painting by French artist Jean-François Millet. Done in oil on canvas, the work depicts a group of haystacks in a French field. The painting is one of a series of four paintings, one for each season, that Millet painted on commission for a French industrialist. The work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.
Peasant Women with Brushwood is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Jean-François Millet, created c. 1852. It is held at the collection of the Hermitage Museum, in Saint Petersburg. The signature of the artist appears at the lower right: JF Millet. This is one of the many paintings where Millet depicted the harsh rural life of the French peasants. The painting depicts two peasant women returning home, at the twilight. They are dressed in homespun clothes and wear clogs, walking along a forest road while carrying huge bundles of brushwood on their backs. Their posture, with heads low-sunk and backs bent, demonstrates the heavy weight that they carry and their strength. The dark colors used make the human figures blend with the surrounding nature.
Man with a Hoe (French: L'homme à la houe), sometimes called The Labourer, is a painting by the French Realist painter Jean-François Millet, created 1860–1862. It is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum, in Los Angeles. Man With a Hoe depicts a weary agricultural worker with blunt facial features and rustic clothing taking a moment of rest as he struggles to clear stones and pernicious weeds from a farm field. L'homme à la houe was first exhibited at the salon of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1863. The immediate response from several critics was wrath; Paul Saint-Victor notably wrote, "He lights his lantern and looks for a cretin; he must have searched for a long time before finding his peasant leaning on a hoe...There is no gleam of human intelligence in this animal. Has he just come from working? Or from murdering?" Saint-Victor is believed to have been comparing the subject of the painting to French serial killer Martin Dumollard.
The Beakful, in French, La Becquée, or Woman Feeding Her Children is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Jean-François Millet, made in 1860. It is held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille. This canvas was the culmination of a long process that began with sketches and preparatory drawings made during 1848–1849. Some of the drawings are also kept at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille.
Shepherdess Seated on a Rock or The Knitter or Shepherdess Knitting is an 1856 oil-on-wood painting by Jean-François Millet. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Millet was a leader of the Barbizon school, which emphasized realism, and is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers and for reinvigorating the genre of landscape painting. The shepherdess in this painting is wearing the linen hood and white cloak that were typical of the peasant women in communities of north-central France such as Barbizon.
Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting by Jean-François Millet completed in 1850 and retouched in 1865. One of Millet's few paintings that is exclusively a landscape, it is in Yale University Art Gallery, in New Haven. In 1849, Millet left Paris, a city that he had lived in for almost a decade. He moved to Barbizon, a small village on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest in the northern part of the center of France, due to a cholera outbreak and political and social unrest caused by the Revolutions of 1848.