Jean Francois Millet

Jean Francois Millet (1814~1875) was a great French realistic pastoral painter. He devoted his life to depict farmers’ pastoral life and his artworks were full of cordial and touching brushwork style, which could derive from his growing background- a peasant family that influenced him much.

 

Millet had not  created many works for his whole lifetime. His artworks, there were only about 80 oil paintings from 1840 to his death (around 30 years), and most of them were in small sizes. This was not because his creation was lack of passion and energy. Actually, his spent more time in thinking. From his large number of sketch drafts, you can find that he did a lot modifying work and thinking on each painting. As you know, a great artist, as long as he has pieces of artwork go down in art history, he will be famous and remembered by people forever. And Millet is just the one.

 

The critic, Churia Khaled had pointed out in his masterpiece, Millet’s Art History that Miller's work depicted the thought of general civilian of that era, and expressed the thought of modern time. He esteemed that Millet was a noble and immortal humanity painter. Another famous writer, Romain Rolland, also named Millet as one of heroes in the book of Millet Biography, because he believed that Millet had patience, love, courage and faith traits, and in the arts area, Millet had indomitable spirit.

 

Paintings like The Sower, The Angelus, The cleaners, Spring, and The Maternal precaution, etc. are some of Millet’s artwork. Approaching to Millet’s works, you will read an era history and idea behind them.