Background
Jean-François Millet was born in Gruchy, Normandy, France, on October 4, 1814. He was a first-born of Jean-Louis-Nicolas and Aimée-Henriette-Adélaïde Henry Millet, who both worked on a farm.
14 Rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris, France
Jean-François Millet studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1837 to 1839.
Jean-François Millet was named the Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1868.
Jean-François Millet was born in Gruchy, Normandy, France, on October 4, 1814. He was a first-born of Jean-Louis-Nicolas and Aimée-Henriette-Adélaïde Henry Millet, who both worked on a farm.
A son of farmers, Jean-François Millet was involved in rural life since his early childhood. He began his education from the study of Latin and modern authors taught to him by a village priest, vicar Jean Lebrisseux.
When Millet was nineteen, his father sent him to Cherbourg (now Cherbourg-Octeville) to study painting under the portrait painter Paul Dumouchel. Two years later, Jean-François became one of the students of Lucien-Théophile Langlois, a history painter and copyist.
Millet received a two-year stipend from the city of Cherbourg in 1837 that helped him to enter the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where Paul Delaroche was his teacher. Jean-François Millet tried to compete for Rome Prize while studying. The attempt was unsuccessful, and the young pupil left his teacher in 1839 and lost the stipend.
Jean-François Millet worked on the land helping his father till 1833.
As to painting career, Millet's first attempt to enter the Salon in 1839 was unsuccessful. A year later, one of his two sent paintings was finally exhibited at the Salon but it didn't bring the painter much success.
During the 1840s, Millet's gradually shifted from classical and religious subjects to scenes of the rural and peasant life with which he was familiar. He gained increasing support and recognition from other painters of his generation. Narcisse Diaz de la Peña and Théodore Rousseau, two landscape painters instrumental in forming the loose association of artists known as the Barbizon school, were among those who supported Millet.
However, the next Salon of 1844 with such his works as The Milkmaid and a large pastel, The Riding Lesson, wasn't much successful too, same as the exhibition at Le Havre the following year. The works of Barbizon artists were generally regarded as crude, unfinished, and unacceptable to the official tastes. After mid-century, however, the Barbizon artists slowly gained increasing recognition, and their achievement became an important inspiration for the younger generation of impressionists.
In 1847, Millet presented Oedipus Taken Down from the Tree at the Salon. The canvas received good reviews from critics. A year later, the government bought his Winnower. The Captivity of the Jews in Babylon, presented later at the Salon, was scorned by the public. In 1849, Jean-François Millet moved to the picturesque village of Barbizon with his wife, where he lived for the rest of his life.
The village inspired the painter to produce his most mature and celebrated paintings, including the Gleaners (1857), the Angelus (1857 - 1859), the Sower (1850), and the Bleaching Tub (about 1861). All the works of that period are full of breadth and simplicity and generally depict one or two peasant figures, quietly engaged in earthy or domestic toil, as heroic pictorial beings.
Living in Barbizon, Jean-François Millet exhibited successfully and regularly sent his works to Europe and America with the help of the dealer Durand-Ruel who lived in London.
One of the latest Millet's works, The Bird Nesters, was finished in 1874.
Water Mill
The Sower
The Gleaners
Catherine Lemaire
Sketch of Moving Farmer
The Carder
Portrait of a Man, Said to Be Leopold Desbrosses
Landscape Hillside in Gruchy
The Blacksmith and His Bride
Shepherdesses Seated in the Shade
Water Mill near Vichy
The Dresser in Gruchy
Shepherdess with the Distaff in Auvergne
The Flight into Egypt
A Stonemason
The Infant (The Sick Child)
Landscape, Vichy
A Hilly Landscape
The Diggers
Naked Peasant Girl at the River
The Knitting Shepherdess
Portrait of Eugene Canoville
The Young Shepherdess
The Bather
House Birthplace Millet
Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys
The Nun's Parrot
Winter: The Faggot Gatherers
Nymph in the Reeds
Louise-Antoinette Feuardent
Landscape, Vichy
The Potato Growers
Young Girl Playing Mandolin
Death and the Woodcutter
Landscape with Two Peasant Women
Self-portrait
In the Garden
Portrait of Armand Ono
Orchard Fence near Vichy
Road from Malavaux, near Cusset
The Angelus
Surroundings of Vichy, House near the Water
The Wood Sawyers
Puy de Dôme
Farm near Vichy
Seated Nude
Farm on the Hills of the Ardoisière near Cusset
Shepherdess Seated on a Rock
Oedipus Taken Down from the Tree
Pastures in Normandy
Puy de Dôme
Dandelions
Wooded Hillside near Vichy
Manor Farm Cousin in Greville
Narcissi and Violets
The Sower
The Church of Greville
Peasant Family
The Sower
Water mill near Vichy
Gathering Apples
Study for a Woman Feeding Chickens
In the Auvergne
Peasants Bringing Home a Calf Born in the Fields
The Sleeping Seamstress
Garden Scene
Spring at Barbizon
The Man with the Hoe
Charity
Shepherdess with her Flock
Harvesters Resting
Shepherd Tending His Flock
Woman Baking Bread
Fishermen
A Shepherdess and Her Flock in the Shade of Trees
Upward Path, near Vichy
Portrait of a Man
The Farm on the Hill
Young Woman
Mother and Two Infants
Woman Hanging Her Laundry
Manor Farm Cousin in Greville
The Drunkeness of Noah
Portrait of Javain (Mayor of Cherbourg)
Harvesting Potatoes
The Spinner, Goatherd of the Auvergne
The Temptation of St. Anthony
Path through the Chestnut Trees, Cusset
Going to Work
Hunting Birds at Night
The Washerwomen
Portrait of Pauline Ono
The Rock of Castel Vendon
Woman with a Rake
Lumberjack Preparing Firewood
Woman Carrying Firewood and a Pail
Norman Milkmaid
Amour's Dance
Self-portrait
Offering to Pan
Women Carrying Faggots
The Winnower
Brushwood Collectors
Haystacks Autumn
Priory at Vauville, Normandy
Spring (Daphnis and Chloë)
A Shepherdess and Her Flock
The Sheep Pen, Moonlight
Laundress
Portrait of a Naval Officer
The Young Seamstress
The Bouquet of Margueritas
Landscape near Vichy
Shepherds of Arcadia
Leconte de Lisle
The Cat Who Became a Woman
Peasant Spreading Manure
Garden
The Knitting Lesson
The Comtesse of Valmont
The Goose Girl
The Cliffs of Gréville
Quotations: "To tell the truth, peasant subjects suit my nature best, for I must confess, at the risk of your taking me to be a Socialist, that the human side is what touches me most in art... The joyous side never shows itself to me; I know not if it exists, but I have never seen it. The gayest thing I know is the calm, the silence, which are so delicious, both in the forest and in the cultivated fields, whether the soil is good for culture or not. You will confess that it always gives you a very dreamy sensation, and that the dream is a sad one, although often very delicious."
Quotes from others about the person
"At last, here is a new man, who has the knowledge which I would like to have, and movement, color, expression, too, – here is a painter!" Narcisse Diaz de la Peña, painter
"Like every other Parisian, Millet was armed with a gun during the Revolution [of 1848], and had to take his place in the defense of the Assembly and the taking of the barricades of the Rochechouart quarter, where he saw the chief of the insurgents fall. He came back angry and indignant at the slaughters of Paris. He had no military spirit, nor the rage of revolt, and all he saw made his heart bleed. We [Alfred Sensier and Millet] used to go together of an evening to the plain of Montmartre or St. Ouen. The next day I would find [in Millet's studio] impressions of the day before, which he had painted in a few hours. His facility was extraordinary, and he never omitted the telling note or charm of color." Alfred Sensier, art historian
"M. Millet, it is plain, understands the true poetry of the fields. He loves the peasants whom he represents. In his grave and serious types we read the sympathy which he feels with their lives. In his pictures sowing, reaping, and grafting are all of them sacred actions, which have a beauty and grandeur of their own, together with a touch of Virgilian melancholy." Theophile Gautier, writer and poet
"An entirely original painter, high-minded and genuinely rustic in nature, who has expressed things about the country and its inhabitants, about their toil, their melancholy, and the nobleness of their labour. He has represented them in a somewhat barbaric fashion, in a manner to which his ideas gave a more expressive force than his hand possessed. The world has been grateful for his intentions; it has recognised in his methods something of the sensibility of a Burns who was a little awkward in expression... He stands out as a deep thinker." Eugène Fromentin, painter and author
Jean-François Millet was married twice. Pauline-Virginie Ono became his first wife in 1841. Four years later, the artist married Catherine Lemaire, a servant girl. The couple had nine children.