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It changed hands for large sums during the painter's lifetime, and is now in the Quincy A. Shaw collection, Boston, Mass. The Woman Sewing by Lamplight, painted in 1872, and sold in 1873 for 38,500 francs, the highest price at that time ever paid for one of Millet's works. The Shepherdess, painted in 1862, and exhibited at the Salon of 1864, also again at the Exposition Universelle of 1867.
Millet's subject, not, I think, his treatment possibly his wider range makes him seem more deeply serious than Corot, but he is not essentially as nearly unique. He is unrivalled in his way, but Corot is unparalleled. Corot inherits the tradition of Claude; his motive, like Claude's, is always an effect, and, like Claude's, his means are light and air.
I sought out a friend who had been Millet's friend for many years and was with him at the last, and as he told me of the last sad months, tears fell from his eyes. Author of "The Gates Ajar," "A Singular Life," etc.
It is idle to deny this potency, for his portrayal of the French peasant in his varied aspects has probably been as efficient a characterization as that of George Sand herself. But, if a moral instead of an æsthetic effect had been Millet's chief intention, we may be sure that it would have been made far less incisively than it has been.
The villagers of the painter's acquaintance were on the whole a prosperous class, nearly all owning their houses and a few acres of ground. The big apple-tree under which the donkey rests is just such an one as grew in Millet's own little garden. Fruit trees were his peculiar delight.
They are like some of Millet's paintings "The Sower," or "The Sheepfold," there is very little detail in them but sometimes a little means so much.
Luke: "Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." A friend of Millet's, who saw these drawings thirty years after, said they were the work of a man who already knew the great significance of art, the effects it was capable of, and what were its resources.
Here is the sacred spot where Millet's saintly old grandmother was laid to rest. A rough stone wall surrounds the churchyard, as old and moss-grown as the building itself. Some stone steps leading into the yard are hollowed by the feet of many generations of worshippers. In the rear is a low stone house embowered in trees.
Barbizon lies on a plain, more vast in the impression which it makes on the eye than in actual area, and the village consists of one long street, which commences at a group of farm buildings of some importance, and ends in the forest of Fontainebleau. About midway down this street, on the way to the forest, Millet's home stood, on the right of the road.
And these events were strewn like Millet's "Sower" from side to side of his path: to take the true Latin significance of the word, they came out from him. "31st July, 1884. "Dear Sir, In fact they took four, in different positions, all judged excellent, all of cabinet size. Each, I believe, costs 2/. I have none at my disposal. With or without my leave, anyone can publish them in any magazine.
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