The work that inspired Van Gogh to give painting another try
ean-françois Millet painted peasants, which did not prove popular with the art world establishment. He presented farm labourers and shepherds as the principal subjects of his pictures, occupying a centre stage that was usually the preserve of exalted biblical, historical or mythological figures.
A humble man, who lived most of his days on the edges of bleak poverty, Millet saw profound Christian values in physical toil, and his paintings frequently appeared to be accompanied by a religious subtext. However, his celebration of the nobility of the peasant class was perceived as bordering on Left-wing propaganda in the deeply status-conscious France of the mid-18th century.
In reality, Millet felt uncomfortable in the presence of the aristocracy or in the drawing rooms of wealthy potential clients. Even so, he was never swayed from his preference for depicting the ceaseless, gruelling labour that was required of the lower members of society, wanting to paint only what he was intimately familiar with. As he once stated: “A peasant I was born and a peasant I will die.”
In The Angelus, painted 1857-59, male and female farmworkers stand alone, their heads bowed in prayer. The man has removed his hat, and the woman clasps her hands together, beside the small cart of potatoes she has gathered. The sun is setting on the panoramic vista behind them and, in the distance, a church steeple is just visible. It must be 6pm, because at that time church bells would ring for the Angelus prayer, and they would both have taken a moment for a simple act of devotion in the fields.
Millet’s sculptural rendering of the figures evokes a quiet dignity, despite their worn clothes and their stooped shoulders. As dusk gathers, we witness their piety, as they utter a prayer for deliverance. On the horizon, the sky is still lit by the fading sun. The steeple represents the connection between heaven and earth at the heart of their faith.
This exquisite painting was a commission Millet had managed to secure from a Boston art collector. Originally titled Prayer
for the Potato Crop, Millet changed its name when the collector decided he didn’t want it after all. The painting would later influence Van Gogh’s Potato
Eaters of 1885. In fact, Van Gogh was so moved by seeing Millet’s
Angelus, that he was inspired to return to painting after a period of bleak desperation.
Salvador Dalí was also obsessed with Millet’s picture, and he recreated the scene on numerous occasions in the Thirties. It is likely that Millet had studied Renaissance works by artists such as Leonardo and Raphael, both of whom had used atmospheric perspective with main figures in the foreground and a deep horizon behind. However, Millet’s two protagonists are arranged horizontally, as though on a stage, not unlike the works of the Neoclassical artists of the 18th century, such as Jacques-louis David.
Born in 1814, in Normandy, Millet had grown up in a modest home and spent his childhood working on the land, until his grandmother had noticed his talent for drawing, and arranged for some tuition. Still, she insisted: “Remember, Jeanfrançois, you are a Christian before you are an artist.”
The family’s unshakeable religious faith must have affected Millet, because later in life he would say: “The joyful effect of life never appears to me. I do not know what it is. The most cheerful things I know are calm and silence.” Despite such a coldly ascetic view of the world, he succeeded in producing paintings that were moving and poetic. Millet enjoyed occasional artistic success and even managed to win a stipend to the prestigious École des Beaux-arts, in “black, muddy, smoky Paris”, as he called it. He was alienated there, and was taunted by his teacher as “the wild man of the woods”. His work was mostly dismissed as “crude, unfinished and unacceptable”.
Millet moved to Barbizon in 1848, a picturesque village that became his home for the rest of his life. Here, he produced his most mature and celebrated paintings, including The Gleaners
(1857), The Sower (1850) and The
Bleaching Tub (1861).
All, like The Angelus, were characterised by his sweeping brushwork and monumental sense of scale, revealing deep feelings about mankind and the soil. The
Gleaners sees women left to pick up the remnants of the harvest, a job that was regarded as among the most menial. Millet uses light to illuminate their hunched shoulders, as they carry out their task in an almost empty field. Behind them stretches a wide, golden sky, the women almost silhouetted.
Millet’s personal convictions, unromanticised imagery and inherent recognition of rustic beauty, won him great respect with coming generations of young painters, photographers and writers, each of whom took inspiration from his steadfast beliefs. The young Impressionists were particularly struck by his work, often citing him as influential in their own works.
In 1857, Millet’s achievements were finally honoured when several of his pictures were included in the prestigious Exposition Universelle; by 1870 he was even selected to the Salon jury. His final years brought financial success, as his work sold to important collectors and to general acclaim.
He went to his grave in 1875, aged 61, still adhering to his favourite passage from the Book of Genesis, which he had always held dear: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground. For out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”
True to his wishes, he died a peasant at heart, one whose deeply spiritual paintings are of such splendour, that they will touch viewers forever.
‘The most cheerful things I know are calm and silence’