BOOKS.
JEAN FRANcOIS MILLET.* "IN the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." These words, constantly repeated by Jean Francois Millet, give the clue to his mind, and consequently to his art. Born a peasant and early accustomed to work in the fields, there was no time when he did not know their significance. In early manhood during the frightful struggle for existence in Paris, and again for many years of his life at Barbizon, the same fate was his. As Millet was one of those artists whose art was deeply coloured by his surroundings, it is not to be wondered at that his theme should have been labour.
Millet's mind was one which loved to search out the essential and the elemental, and it was these qualities that he tried to paint. It is in this faculty of seeing into the depths of things and reducing individuals to types that this painter is pre-eminent. No doubt early association accounts largely for his choice of subject ; but at the same time nowhere else so well as in the life in the fields could the painter find man doing as he had done through "im- memorial tracts of time." Sowing and gleaning, tilling the ground, and pasturing flocks and herds has been the work of man since the dawn of his existence. As Stevenson says, "The eternal life of man, spent under sun and rain and in rude physical effort, lies upon one side, scarce changed from the beginning." And here lies the fundamental difference between the art of Millet and that of other peasant-painters like Bastien-Lepage. The latter represented the labourer as he stood before him with all the accidents of his time ; the former put these aside and showed us " the eternal life of man scarce changed since the beginning."
The book before us does not claim to be a new view of Millet's life, but takes for its foundation the life left un- finished by Sensier, Millet's great friend, and which is now
out of print. This original work consisted largely of letters from the painter to the author. These are all given by Mrs. lAdy in the present volume, together with additional ones to continue the story where it was broken off by Sensier's death. In addition to this, much important material has been tathered together from various sources,—some of the most nteresting from American visitors to Millet at his home in arbizon. The putting together of these materials has been tilf ally done, and altogether make an excellent piece of work. he only fault we have to find with Mrs. Ady's book is the riticism she has thought fit to make of Millet's oil technique ad colour at the end of the volume. These remarks show tat the writer has little knowledge of the mysteries of the of painting. The " Glanenses " in the Louvre is a master. pee of execution, and we venture to say that it and some of ti Corots are the only modern works in that gallery that wild hold their own merely as paintings if placed side by sii with the Titians and the Giorgone in the Salon Quarre. TI book before us has eight photogravures, which are very got. But it would have been much more interesting to ha i had a large number of lees elaborately produced repro- dnAons of Millet's pictures. As these pictures are almost all '\ private collections, and many in America, the reproduc- timbf a number of these would have been more valuable thathat of a few only of the best known.
Met was born at Gruchy, a small village in Normandy, in 1811,nd here be spent his youth. His was the good fortune to co; in contact in his earliest years with people of strong persolity. His father, grandmother, and great-uncles were all re;rkable people. Jean Louis, the father, as he took his boy °to work in the fields of his little farm, would point out take future painter the beautiful shapes of the trees, and me the boy examine the delicate structure of the grasses When the child grew up and was entering on his °air of a painter, it was the father's wish that • Jean .sigois Millet : his Life and Letters. By Julia Cartwright (Mn,* Henry A4 London : Swan Sonnenschoin and Co. they should see Rome together. This wish was never realised, for Jean Louis died while Francois was studying art at Cherbourg. Millet's grandmother seems to have been a woman of great piety and noble character ; her grandson said in after years, " Hers was a beautiful religion, for it gave her strength to love so well and so unselfishly." According to the Norman custom, upon her devolved the care of her
daughter's children, so that the mistress of the house might have time for the many and arduous duties of a farmer's wife. A brother of this grandmother was a miller near by ; in his spare time he studied Montaigne and Pascal and the pietists of Port Royal. Another relative who exercised a strong influence on Millet's childhood was his great-uncle, the Abbe Charles Millet. This man was a peasant who had become a priest, and who had barely escaped with his life during the Revolution. In later life he quietly said mass at Gruchy, and tilled the family fields. He taught Francois to read as he had taught his father before him. At twelve years old Millet was being prepared for his first Communion by the Abbe Herpent, who was so struck by the answers of the boy that he offered to teach him Latin, and it was then that Millet first came under the influence of Virgil, an influence which always remained. This kind priest was succeeded soon after by another who also taught the boy. With Abbe Lebrissenx the future painter's mind
began to open. He explained the Psalms to him, and when the boy began to tell him how the wonder and mystery of Nature affected him he exclaimed, " Ah my poor child, you have a heart that will give you trouble. You do not know how much you will have to suffer." Years after, when Millet had gone through terrible trials and painted some of his most splendid pictures, he was in a little Norman church at the Angelus and recognised in the old priest his former friend :- "' Ah! it is you, my dear child, little Francois !' the good old man cried; and they embraced each other with tears in their eyes. And your Bible, Francois, have you forgotten it ? ' asked the cure presently. The Psalms you were so fond of,—do you ever read them now ?'—' They are my breviary,' replied Millet. • It is there that I find all I paint.'—' 1 seldom hear such words nowadays,' said the old Ablnl with a sigh of thankfulness. But you will have your reward. And Virgil?—you were very fond of him in your old days.'—' I love him still,' replied Millet.—' That is well. I am content, my son,' said the old man. • Where I sowed the blade has sprung up. It is you who will one day reap the harvest.'"
At the age Df twenty-two Millet began his career in Paris and stayed there for twelve years. During this period his
struggle with poverty was constant, and once, at least, he and his wife were face to face with starvation. Although this
period did not see the production of any great picture, it was at this time that he got the technical mastery which later enabled him to paint his great works. In 1849, to save his children from the cholera, Millet fled from Paris, and almost accidentally lighted on Barbizon, a village on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. Before leaving Paris Millet's style had undergone a great change, and his resolve to be the painter of the fields had been taken. Millet was always a true peasant, and his stay in Paris had been an exile. He loved the fields deeply and passionately, and as he settled down among them his spirit revived. Not that his troubles were all over. Often he was in sore straits for money to pay the expenses of the household, but gradually things improved till he became, at least towards the end of his life, comfortably off. Millet's character was one of singular charm. Deeply religious and sincere, thoughtful, even melancholy, he retained the simplicity of the Norman peasant along with the insight of a great poet. His reading was large and various. Above all he set the Bible,—the sublime poetry of the Old Testament and the tenderness of the New found an echo in the mind of the creator of " The Sower " and of " The Angelus." Virgil and Theocritus among the classics were his favourites. Dante, Shakespeare, and Scott were constantly read by him, as well as the great writers of his own nation.
His love for the Preraphaelite painters was great. The noble simplicity of Giotto had an attraction for him. As a young man he tells us that he stood for the whole day before the inimitable "Concert" of Giorgone's in the Louvre, and its deep harmony influenced much of his work. But it was Michelangelo —the greatest of all—whose influence was the most abiding. " He who will haunt me all my life," as he said him-
self. Above all things the art of Millet sought out the essential. To divest human form of its encumbrances and present its grand rhythmical movements was the aim alike of the Norman and the Florentine. And if Michelangelo reached a region of more sublime poetry and exalted beauty, Millet reached his fellow-men, and touched them in their daily life. The accusation was often made that the painter did not care for the beauty of Nature. This charge he met in a letter to Sensier, in which he says :-
" There are people who say I see no charm in the country. I see much more than charms there,—infinite splendours. I see, as well as they do, the little flowers of which Christ said : I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' I see very well the aureoles of the dandelions, and the sun spreading his glory in the clouds over the distant worlds. But none the less I see down there in the plain the steaming horses leading the plough, and in a rocky corner a man quite worn out, whose han has been heard since morning, and who tries to straighten himself and take breath for a moment. The drama is surrounded with splendour. It is not my invention, and this ex- pression= the cry of the ground '—was heard long ago."
Millet was the first and greatest of democratic artists. He did not look at the labourer from the outside. Great as was Wordsworth's sympathy with the poor, it was always the sympathy bestowed from without. Millet was the labourer become articulate. Hence the peculiar value of his work. He possessed all the resources of the art of painting. He had knowledge gained in the schools, and perfected by deep study of the great works of the past. His mind was deeply poetical, and his sense of beauty was of the noblest. But he remained a true peasant at heart. " I have never in all my life known anything but the fields ; I try and say as best I can what I saw and felt when I worked there." Who shall say that he did not succeed ?
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