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Updated: May 27, 2025
I can think of nothing but the clothing of Millet's peasants to compare with this exterior of John's. He is himself a peasant of the woods. He has not the predatory instincts. If he could have his way, not a shot would be fired by any of us for the mere idle sport of killing.
It was in the last year of Millet's life that he told the young American how, in his early days, a dealer would come to him for a picture and, "having nothing painted, he would offer the dealer a book and ask him to wait for a little while that he might add a few touches to the picture."
With him Corot divided his scanty store; he sang and played his guitar at the Millet hearthstone when he had nothing but himself to give; and when, in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, Millet felt the chill night of death settling down upon him, and the fear that want would come to his loved ones haunted his dreams, Corot assured him by settling upon the family the sum of one thousand francs a year, until the youngest child should become of age, and during Madame Millet's life.
Truly the brush has plastered that back as a trowel might, and the result reminds one of stone and mortar, as Millet's execution reminds one of mud-pie making. The handicraft is as barbarous in Chavannes as it is in Millet, and we think of them more as great poets working in a not wholly sympathetic and, in their hands, somewhat rebellious material.
What was she, after all? A mere chit of a school girl! It was ridiculous. He would heave her overboard forthwith, and trouble his head no more about her. He would not, however, give up visiting his old confidante on her account oh dear, no! It was wonderful what an amount of guarding seemed to be required by the coast in the vicinity of Miss Millet's cottage during the following week!
What it meant to Millet, the full and true significance of the situation as the painter felt it, is there expressed upon his canvas in terms of visible aspect; and correspondingly, Millet's meaning is fully and truly received in the measure that we feel in ourselves the emotion roused by the sight of his color and form.
The steps stopped at the gate and turned in, and one of the choirmen came to the door. There were little movements and soft grumblings inside the shawl in the organist's arms, and he turned quite cold with apprehension. 'Anyone at home? sounded Millet's jovial voice at the open door. ''Evening, Mr Robins are you there? All in the dark, eh? I wanted a couple of words with you about that song.
He did not therefore follow up "The Duel" with other comments on the follies of modern society for in the temper of that time this picture, like Couture's "Roman Orgie" and Millet's "Man with the Hoe," was looked upon as a satire and a warning, and owed its popularity as much to this conviction on the part of the public as to its pictorial merits but returned to antique times, and showed in his treatment of themes from that source an equal, if not a greater power to interest the public.
His confession of faith is in the words, "One must be able to make use of the trivial for the expression of the sublime"; and this painter of "rustic genre" is the world's greatest master of the sublime after Michelangelo. Millet. The comparison with Michelangelo is inevitable and has been made again and again by those who have felt the elemental grandeur of Millet's work.
Men high in power, deceived by the "lack of form," the innocent naivete as of childhood, the simple homeliness of expression, the absence of effort, declared again and again that Millet's work was not art, nor Wagner's "recurring theme" true music, nor Whitman's rhymeless lines poetry.
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