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Updated: June 27, 2025
In 1889 it was purchased by Madame Pommeroy for 300,000 francs, and presented to the Louvre, Paris. A pencil drawing of the three figures is in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Milkmaid, painted in 1871 from a sketch made in Gréville. Seen in Millet's studio in 1873 by Will Low, the American artist.
Hence the eye must be led upward by minor objects, to take in the entire panorama spread before us. All through the years of Millet's life and work in Barbizon, his thoughts used to turn often to the little village in Normandy where he spent his youth. His early life in the fields impressed upon his memory all the out-of-door sights peculiar to his native province.
Gather into a single room a fragment of the Parthenon frieze, Michelangelo's "Day and Night," Botticelli's "Spring," the sprites and children of Donatello and Delia Robbia, Velasquez's "Pope Innocent," Rembrandt's "Cloth-weavers," Frans Hals' "Musician," Millet's "Sower," Whistler's "Carlyle." There is here no thought of period or of school.
Frank Millet's checkered career, with opposites so much mingled in it, that such work as he has done for Harper should have had as little in common as possible with midland English scenery.
An accident which made me acquainted with Millet's eldest son, a painter of talent, seemed for a time to bring me no nearer to knowing the father until one day some remark of mine which showed at least a sincere admiration for his work made the son suggest that I should come and see a recently completed picture.
If he accepted the name, with a kind of pride, it was in protest against the frivolity and artificiality of the fashionable art of the day. But if too much has been made of Millet's peasant origin, perhaps hardly enough has been made of his race.
"No, it will pass," was his answer; and going to his easel he placed, with the help of his son, picture after picture, for my delectation. It was Millet's habit to commence a great number of pictures. On some of them he would work as long, according to his own expression, as he saw the scene in nature before him; for, at least at this epoch, he never painted directly from nature.
He has lately given himself up to these latter objects, and discovered that they have mysteries more absorbing than any others. I find in Harper, in 1885. "A Wild-goose Chase" through North Germany and Denmark, in which both pencil and pen are Mr. Millet's, and both show the natural and the trained observer.
But Millet's father was a sober and austere man, a person of great dignity and solemnity, who decided to put his son's powers to the test in a very regular and critical fashion. He had often watched Francois drawing, and he thought well of the boy's work.
The awful tension of the last month was broken and the word victory was uttered by thousands of throats, suddenly grown husky with emotion. My arrival and the news I bore created a sensation among my servants and the remaining inhabitants of Millet's famous village.
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