Jean-François Millet's Peasants

Jean-François Millet was born in 1814 in a French farming village. He was educated by his parish priest, who recognized his artistic ability and arranged for him to apprentice with a portrait painter in Cherbourg. That painter and other friends eventually paid for Millet to travel to Paris and study at the École des Beaux-Arts, and by 1840 he was painting professionally and showing pictures at the Paris Salon. I pass on this little biography as a reminder that in the old, aristocratic world there were systems in place for recognizing the most intellectually gifted boys and providing them with education. The system was unfair, and intentionally so, but it did sometimes recognize and promote the greatest talents. It didn't work perfectly, but what does? The Sower, 1851

Throughout his career Millet painted mainly rural scenes. These were only modestly successful in the art world of Paris, but publishers recognized that they would be very popular with the bourgeoisie of smaller cities and towns. So they encouraged Millet to make these engravings, and it was through their publication that Millet became widely known in his own time. He had a gift for creating images that were both realistic and nostalgic at the same time. The Manure Cart, 1855.

The Gleaners, 1856. Many modern painters were fascinated by Millet, from Van Gogh to Dali. Millet rebelled in his way against the strictures of High Art by painting peasants rather than noblemen or religious figures, suggesting that one could get around convention by looking anew at the world and painting what others had ignored.

Leaving for Work, 1863. Millet was able to capitalize on the nostalgia for rural life bred by rapid industrialization and have a very successful career. Toward the end of his life his paintings finally became very popular, and some of them were resold for several times what Millet had received for them. This happened to other artists at around the same time (c. 1870), a sign that the modern art market was developing. The great disparity in these resale prices led to agitation for the droit de suite, the right of artists to a share of the profits made by others who speculated in their work. So even the most nostalgic and backward-looking nineteenth-century art turns out to have been enmeshed with changes in mass publishing, the evolution of capital markets, avant garde attacks on the art establishment, and so. It was a revolutionary age.