Jean FranÇois Millet was born on October 4, 1814, that is at the period when French art, at any rate as far as landscape painting is concerned, had reached its lowest ebb. Throughout the eighteenth century the landscape painter had been hard put to make a living. The taste of connoisseurs throughout the century had been for portraits and interiors, or for those numerous pastoral subjects which were carried out with so much decorative charm by such men as Watteau and Boucher. Such landscape painting as existed was of the type popularised by Vernet; it was built upon a curious mixture of Italian influence coming from Panini and Salvator Rosa. The only evidence of revolt against such a state of affairs we find in the works of Hubert Robert and Moreau. These two, and more especially would I direct the reader’s attention to the latter, struggled hard to break down the conventionalities of the time. They endeavoured to infuse some sense of atmosphere into their pictures, and whilst frequently their trees and figures are painfully formal, they yet stand alone in the French school as the pioneers of a phase of art which was to attain its zenith in the middle of the nineteenth century.

But after the Revolution, and during the whole of the time that France was under the domination of Napoleon, very rigid principles indeed were enforced with regard to the direction that art should take. The innovation which had its commencement in the reign of Louis XVI. swept everything before it as it gained force. Classical art and traditions dominated the whole French school, and no artist, however great his reputation, attempted for many years to swim against the stream. In spite of the principles of liberty and equality which were claimed for all under the new rÉgime, a terribly strict eye was kept upon any innovations which might break out in the form of a naturalistic art. The directors of this new movement failed to see that the conditions which had produced the great Greek and Roman sculptors had passed away, and that the latter’s supremacy was due to the fact that their productions were symbolical of the loftiest thoughts of their own epoch. The art which expresses the ambitions and noblest thoughts of its time will alone endure. These expressions are not applicable to any other condition than those which called them forth, and hence in attempting to purify the rococo which had existed up to the middle of the eighteenth century, by a return to classical traditions, they were only copying that which their predecessors had done, and in so doing left us without any original expression of their own time.

Into such a condition of affairs was Millet born, and he was numbered amongst that little band of men which included Rousseau, Corot, DuprÉ, Diaz, and Daumier, who were to lay the foundations of the modern naturalistic school. At the outset it was seemingly a hopeless struggle they undertook; a struggle against prejudice and influence which was only to be brought to a victorious culmination after years of struggle and disappointment. Of this little band, Millet was perhaps the best equipped for the privations which were necessary. He came of a peasant stock who inhabited Gruchy, a small village situated in the commune of GrÉville, close to Cherbourg. Grouped underneath the humble roof was the grandmother, who had been left a widow fifteen years before; her son, Jean Louis Nicolas Millet, and his wife and eight children, of which our artist was the second. His grandmother appears to have been a pious old lady, whose chief delight was in her grandchildren, to whom she taught those religious principles which stood them in good stead in after life. We are told that Millet’s father possessed a force of character one does not often find amongst men in his rank of life. He was of a contemplative disposition, and had a keenly developed feeling for natural beauty. He possessed moreover a keen appreciation of music, which unfortunately he does not appear to have had much opportunity of cultivating. His wife was an excellent housewife and of a religious turn of mind. The house they occupied, situated quite a short distance from the sea, was placed in a tract of country which, whilst it had rugged and picturesque features, was not of a nature which would yield extraordinary results under cultivation. It was, therefore, a hard struggle for existence which Millet in his first years saw going on around him. Not that the family were any the less happy for having to work laboriously for their livelihood. They had been brought up amidst such surroundings; their wants were simple and easily gratified, and the tranquillity of the mÉnage more than counterbalanced those doubtful luxuries which easier circumstances would have brought their way. Throughout his life Millet maintained the extreme simplicity he had seen practised in the home of his childhood, and long years afterwards he was accustomed to look back with pleasureable memories upon his early years.

Gruchy, situated in one of the wildest parts of Normandy, feels the full effect of every storm which blows up from the Atlantic. There is nothing to shelter the exposed hamlets studded along the coast from the fury of the western gale, and the rocks are but too often strewn with the wrecks of vessels which have come to grief in that terrible sea. Millet in his youth must have witnessed many of these catastrophes. Quite a number of drawings by him are extant representing succour being extended to some vessel in difficulties, or the hauling up of some wreckage on to the rocks. The studious boy must have been impressed as he saw the sternness of the combat in his native country between men and nature; the wind-swept fields, and hills bare to the point of savageness. The very trees themselves dwarfed and gnarled; in their struggle with the elements they have been made tough and hardy as the inhabitants of the country themselves, and, stunted as they are, yet show well that they can resist the force of the fiercest storm. The brooding and contemplative character of the father having descended to the son, we can quite imagine the effect such surroundings would have upon him. As he looked back in after years upon his roamings in his native country, he appreciated the awe-inspiring character of the scenery in which he had been born. He would doubtless recall many a walk amidst the fields with the wind blowing in his face as it rushed in from the Atlantic, the rain beating hard upon the freshly ploughed fields, and the distant figure of the ploughman struggling hard with his team against the stiff sou’wester. The great mass of vapour overhead whirled before the violence of the storm, casting grey and pearly light over the whole scene, whilst far away on the top of the hill a clump of trees, bent with their resistance to the wind, are silhouetted against the sky. Many a drawing of this kind we encounter in the later work of Millet, which shows how his thoughts harked back in certain moments to the scenes he had left behind him for ever.

We know that on one or two occasions he returned to Gruchy. Once or twice he had urgent business which took him back, but sometimes he went with no other purpose than to renew acquaintance with the scenes of yore.

Little Jean FranÇois was his grandmother’s favourite. It was she who taught him the names of things which surrounded him, and perhaps directed his thoughts in the channels to which they were finally to be devoted. Her brother Charles, who formed one of the family, used to take him for walks, telling him stories on the way. Millet was devotedly attached to this old man, and when at the age of seven years he lost him, the gap in his life thus left made an impression upon his memory never to be effaced.

Five years afterwards he was placed in the hands of the vicar for the purpose of preparing him for his first communion. The good man seems to have been taken with the child; he found him so attentive to all natural phenomenon which was passing around him and intelligent in an unusual degree. He quickly learnt a considerable amount of Latin, which introduced him to the great classics. Unfortunately for Millet, the vicar accepted an offer of transference to a better parish in the vicinity. The boy had made such progress with his master that it was decided that he should go with him to his new abode. He was, however, so missed in his own home, that when he came back for his first holidays it was decided that he should not return.

He now gave serious attention to the agricultural pursuits of his father. He threw himself heartily into the work of the farm, and assisted in the work of sowing and harvesting, of pruning and thrashing according to the season. His spare time was occupied in reading with avidity various masterpieces of literature. The authors he found at hand were such as FÉnÉlon and Bossuet, but he developed a decided preference, which lasted till the end of his life, for Virgil and the Bible.

It was at this time that his taste for art began to be developed. He drew the objects he found around him, and soon acquired sufficient confidence in his skill to execute a large drawing representing two shepherds keeping guard over their sheep. These first efforts date from about his seventeenth year, and foretell the advent of the style in which he was later to become pre-eminent.