{"id":1350,"date":"2017-01-11T19:55:18","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T19:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/?p=1350"},"modified":"2017-01-14T18:03:21","modified_gmt":"2017-01-14T18:03:21","slug":"the-studio-of-jean-francois-millet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/?p=1350","title":{"rendered":"The studio of Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MaisonJean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet<\/strong> (1814 to1875) was born in Normandy\u00a0and\u00a0was\u00a0one of the Barbizon school painters. Today, in Barbizon, you can visit his original studio just outside Paris that is crammed with his drawings, some paintings and many personal artefacts.<\/p>\n

Millet moved to Paris in 1837\u00a0where he was funded to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts<\/em> with Paul Delaroche. In 1839 his scholarship was terminated, plus\u00a0his first submission to the Paris Salon was rejected. This was a difficult period\u00a0for him.\u00a0Fighting against great odds, and suffering a long period of extreme hardship, Millet nevertheless married in 1841. However, after further rejections from the Paris Salon in 1843, \u00a0his first wife died of consumption the same year. He went\u00a0briefly to Le Havre with his new companion Catherine Lemaire. They would have nine children and remain together for the rest of Millet’s life,\u00a0he would eventually marry her in a civil ceremony in 1853.<\/p>\n

The modest museum is in the house where the family\u00a0lived in Barbizon. It was originally a barn.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Things did gradually turn around for him. In 1847 his first Salon success came with the exhibition of\u00a0Oedipus Taken down from the Tree<\/em>, and in 1848 his Winnower<\/em> was bought by the government. It was praised by the critic Gautier as having ‘everything it takes to horrify the bourgeois’.\u00a0The\u00a0Oedipus<\/em>\u00a0painting\u00a0is one of Millet’s rare mythological subjects. Scientific exploration has shown that beneath the surface is\u00a0a painting of Saint Jerome, which had been previously rejected by the Paris Salon and thought lost. In 1849 Millet painted Harvesters<\/em>, a commission for the state. In the Salon of that year he exhibited Shepherdess Sitting at the Edge of the Forest<\/em>, a small oil painting which turned\u00a0away from previous idealised pastoral subjects in favour of a more realistic and personal approach. While they were living back in Paris, a cholera epidemic broke out\u00a0after the Revolution.\u00a0Accordingly, in 1949 he moved his family to Barbizon near\u00a0the Fontainebleau Forest, south east of Paris. He lived here for the rest of his life, mostly in poverty.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0resisted the then\u00a0tradition of classical and religious painting, preferring a direct representation\u00a0of the\u00a0natural world. In doing so,\u00a0Millet was the first painter to show\u00a0rural life in a way that\u00a0the peasant was the central\u00a0heroic figure. It is these realistic\u00a0scenes of farmers absorbed\u00a0in their work on the land\u00a0that\u00a0are now seen as part of the\u00a0Realist art movement. They capture the poverty of rural French life with their\u00a0monumental sense of scale and the gentle dignity of the\u00a0figures. Conservatives\u00a0at the time\u00a0regarded his paintings as unrefined\u00a0and subversive, as they saw the peasantry being a potential source of civil unrest.<\/p>\n

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The first room was the studio with a north light window.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although he drew from life, he always\u00a0painted in his studio from his drawings. In Barbizon, you can visit this Maison et\u00a0Atelier<\/em>\u00a0where he lived and\u00a0worked for 25 years, and where the majority\u00a0of his most famous works were painted. You can\u00a0see many of his preparatory drawings, wonderfully eloquent and strong. Amazingly, even some of his\u00a0original drawings are for sale, along with works\u00a0of fellow Barbizon School painters, and some oil paintings from\u00a0that time. The museum is\u00a0in the\u00a0three modest\u00a0rooms that he, his wife, and their\u00a0nine children lived. It is not a refined, overly presented or sanitised space \u2013 and this\u00a0feels perfectly right considering the subject matter of his paintings. Originally it was a barn, with the first room being\u00a0his atelier\u00a0with its large north facing window. It is rare these days to be able to visit the studio of a true past master that still feels it has his\u00a0spirit. It is a small space crammed with his drawings, etching and engravings, some paintings, plaster casts and sculptures, furniture and artefacts, some of his pallets with his dried paint, and even the same type of\u00a0clogs that his pheasants wear in the paintings. I think it is wonderful, and it\u00a0felt to me that he had just left. Romantic that I am, I thought\u00a0I imagined the\u00a0faint whiff of\u00a0his pipe tobacco mixing with\u00a0the cloying scent of linseed oil and the wood smoke from the fire.<\/p>\n

Plaster casts, sketches, drawings, etchings, prints all jostle for space in this fabulous room<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He painted for the rest of his life in\u00a0this studio. However, from about 1850 his fortunes changed for the better. Millet entered into an arrangement with his friend Sensier, who provided the artist with materials and money in return for drawings and paintings, while Millet\u00a0was also free to sell work to other buyers. At the 1850 Salon in Paris, he exhibited The<\/em>\u00a0Haymakers Rest<\/em>\u00a0and The Sower<\/em>, which was\u00a0particularly controversial in the political climate of the time, but was to be seen as his first major masterpiece and the earliest of the trio of paintings that would include his most famous\u00a0The Gleaners<\/em> and The Angelus<\/em> (Les glaneuses <\/em>and\u00a0L’Ang\u00e9lus).<\/em><\/p>\n

From 1850 to 1853 Millet worked on Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz)<\/em> in Barbizon at this atelier. This\u00a0painting he would eventually consider as his most important. Conceived to rival his heroes Michelangelo and Poussin, it was the painting that marked his complete transition from the\u00a0depiction of symbolic imagery of peasant life to that of contemporary social conditions. It was the only painting he ever dated. In the 1860s, the world caught up with him and he began to prosper and to build a reputation which meant that his last years were marked by some financial success and increased official recognition. In 1867, the\u00a0Exposition Universelle<\/em>\u00a0hosted a major showing of his work. The following year Millet was named\u00a0Chevalier de la L\u00e9gion d’Honneur <\/em>and in 1870\u00a0he\u00a0was elected to the Paris Salon jury.<\/p>\n

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The stopped clock in the studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Millet\u00a0was not the first painter to go to Barbizon. Beginning as early as\u00a0the 1820s, artists had gone\u00a0to Barbizon village to\u00a0paint in the\u00a0nearby forest.\u00a0In fact,\u00a0in the late 1860s, these painters attracted the attention of a younger generation of French artists\u00a0including\u00a0Monet,\u00a0Renoir and Sisley. In the 1870s these younger\u00a0artists, with\u00a0others, developed Impressionism. It was only\u00a0in the 19th century after the rise of Impressionism that this informal group of artists,\u00a0Corot,\u00a0Rousseau,\u00a0Courbet, Millet and others, began to be known as members of a school: the Barbizon School of Painters. They painted nature as they saw it, anticipating the ethos of Impressionism. Millets\u00a0subject matter with its social implications appealed greatly to artists such as Seurat and van Gogh, but\u00a0he was only internationally\u00a0recognised as an important and highly influential artist after he died. By the time of his death although he was an honoured figure he was\u00a0still not financially secure, so much so that fellow\u00a0Babrizon school painter and close friend Corot supported his widow. He died in Barbizon\u00a0in 1875 where he\u00a0is buried next to his closest friend and fellow Barbizon School Painter, Th\u00e9odore Rousseau. The clock in his\u00a0studio was stopped at\u00a0the time when he died, and it is still stopped at 6 o’clock.<\/p>\n

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The stopped clock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n