McClures Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 | Page 7

me, but you seem as much or more proud of this than anything
you have shown."
"Exactly," answered Millet, with an amused smile at my eagerness.
"Everything in nature is good to paint, and the painter's business is to
be occupied with his manner of rendering it. These pears, a man or a
woman, a flock of sheep, all have the same qualities for a painter.
There are," with a gesture of his hands to make his meaning clear,
"things that lie flat, that are horizontal, like a plain; and there are others
which stand up, are perpendicular; and there are the planes between: all
of which should be expressed in a picture. There are the distances
between objects also. But all this can be found in the simplest thing as
in the most complicated."
"But," I again ventured, "surely some subjects are more important than
others."
"Some are more interesting in the sense that they add to the problems
of a painter. When he has to paint a human being, he has to represent
truth of action, the particular character of an individual; but he must do
the latter when he paints a pear. No two pears are alike."
I fear at the time I hardly understood the importance of the lesson
which I then received; certainly not to the degree with which
experience has confirmed it. But I have written it here, the sense, if not
the actual language, because Millet has been so often misrepresented as
seeking to point a moral through the subject of his pictures. When we
recall the manner in which "The Angelus" was paraded through the
country a few years ago, and the genuine sentiment of the simple
scene--where Millet had endeavored to express "the things that lie flat,
like a plain; and the things that stand up," like his peasants--was
travestied by gushing sentimentalists, it is pleasant to think of the
wholesome common sense of the great painter.

[Illustration: A YOUNG SHEPHERDESS. FROM A PAINTING BY
JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET.
The background here is typical of that part of the forest of
Fontainebleau which borders the plain of Barbizon.]
The picture which I had specially come to see was meanwhile standing
covered with a drapery, on another easel, and at length the resources of
the studio were apparently exhausted. Millet asked me to step back a
few paces to where a short curtain was placed on a light iron rod at
right angles from the studio window, so that a person standing behind it
saw into the studio while his eyes were screened from the glare of the
window. The painter then drew the covering, and--I feel that what I am
about to say may seem superlative, and I am quite willing to-day to
account for it by the enthusiasm for the painter's work, which had been
growing crescendo with each successive moment passed in the studio.
Be that as it may, the picture which I saw caused me to forget where I
was, to forget painting, and to look, apparently, on a more enchanting
scene than my eyes had ever beheld--one more enchanting than they
have since seen. It was a landscape, "Springtime," now in the Louvre.
Ah me! I have seen the picture since, not once, but many times, and he
who will go to Paris may see it. A beautiful picture; but of the
transcendent beauty which transfigured it that day, it has but the
suggestion. It is still a masterpiece, however, and still conveys, by
methods peculiarly Millet's own, a satisfying sense of the open air, and
the charm of fickle spring. The method is that founded on the constant
observation of nature by a mind acute to perceive, and educated to
remember. The method is one which misses many trivial truths, and
thereby loses the superficial look of reality which many smaller men
have learned to give; but it retains the larger, more essential truths.
Though dependence on memory carried to the extent of Millet's
practice would be fatal to a weaker man, it can hardly be doubted that it
was the natural method for him.
I left the studio that day, walking on clouds. When I returned it was
always to receive kindly and practical counsel. For Millet, though
conscious, as such a man must be, of his importance, was the simplest
of men. In appearance the portrait published here gives him in his
youth. At the time of which I speak he was heavier, with a firm nose,
eyes that, deeply set, seemed to look inwards, except, when directly

addressing one, there was a sudden gleam. His manner of speech was
slow and measured, perhaps out of kindness to the stranger, though I
am inclined to think that it was rather the speech of one who arrays his