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

of Bossuet and Fénelon.
[Illustration: THE GLEANERS. FROM A PAINTING IN THE
LOUVRE, BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET, EXHIBITED IN THE
SALON OF 1857.
"The three fates of pauperism" was the disdainful appreciation of Paul
de Saint-Victor on 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 François, 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