McClures Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 | Page 3

the first exhibition of this picture, while Edmond About wrote: "The picture attracts one from afar by its air of grandeur and serenity. It has the character of a religious painting. It is drawn without fault, and colored without crudity; and one feels the August sun which ripens the wheat." Sensier says: "The picture sold with difficulty for four hundred dollars. What is it worth to-day?"]
In his father, whose strongest characteristic was an intense love of nature, Millet found an unconscious influence in the direction which his life was to follow. Millet recalled in after life that he would show him a blade of grass or a flower, and say: "See how beautiful; how the petals overlap; and the tree there, how strong and fine it is!" It was his father who was attentive to the youth's first rude efforts, and who encouraged him when the decisive step was to be taken, which Millet, feeling that his labor in the fields was necessary to the common good of the family, hesitated to take. The boy was in his eighteenth year when his father said:
"My poor Fran?ois, you are tormented between your desire to be an artist and your duty to the family. Now that your brothers are growing, they can take their turn in the fields. I have long wished that you could be instructed in the craft of the painter, which I am told is so noble, and we will go to Cherbourg and see what can be done."
[Illustration: THE ANGELES, MILLET'S MOST FAMOUS PICTURE.
Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. Despite its fame, this is distinctly not Millet's masterpiece. During his life it sold for about ten thousand dollars, and later for one hundred and fifty thousand.]
Thus encouraged, the boy made two drawings--one of two shepherds in blouse and _sabots_, one listening while the other played a rustic flute; and a second where, under a starlit sky, a man came from out a house, carrying bread for a mendicant at his gate. Armed with these two designs--typical of the work which in the end, after being led astray by schools and popular taste, he was to do--the two peasants sought a local painter named Mouchel at Cherbourg. After a moment of doubt as to the originality of the youth's work, Mouchel offered to teach him all that he knew.
Millet stayed with Mouchel some months. Then his father's death recalled him home, where his honest spirit prompted him to remain as the eldest son and head of the family, although his heart was less than ever in the fields. But this the mother, brought up in the spirit of resignation, would not allow him to do. "God has made you a painter. His will be done. Your father, my Jean Louis, has said it was to be, and you must return to Cherbourg."
Millet returned to Cherbourg, this time to the studio of one Langlois, a pupil of Gros, who was the principal painter of the little city. But Langlois, like his first master, Mouchel, kept him at work copying either his own studies or pictures in the city museum. After a few months, though, he had the honesty to recognize that his pupil needed more efficient instruction than he could give him, and in August, 1836, he addressed a petition to the mayor and common council of the city of Cherbourg, who took the matter into consideration, and, with the authorities of the department, voted a sum of one thousand francs--two hundred dollars--as a yearly allowance to Millet, in order that he might pursue his studies in Paris. Langlois in his petition asks that he be permitted to "raise without fear the veil of the future, and to assure the municipal council a place in the memory of the world for having been the first to endow their country with one more great name." Grandiloquent promise has often been made without result; but one must admire the hard-headed Norman councillors who, representing a little provincial city which in 1884 had but thirty-six thousand inhabitants, gave even this modest sum to assure a future to one who might reflect honor on his country.
[Illustration: NESTLINGS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, IN THE MUSEUM AT LILLE.
Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A notable instance of the scope of Millet's power, as tender in depicting children as it is austere in "The Gleaners."]
With a portion, of this allowance, and a small addition from the "economies" of his mother and grandmother, Millet went to Paris in 1837. The great city failed to please the country-bred youth, and, indeed, until the end of his life, Millet disliked Paris. I remember his saying that, on his visits from Barbizon to the capital, he was happy on his arrival at the station,