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| Fine Art Trade Guild Member: 6083 |
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| Company Number 5292052 |
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Francois Millet |
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| Born: 1814 - Died: 1875. |
| Millet was a founder of the Barbizon school in rural France He is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers. Millet can be categorized as part of the movement termed "naturalism", but also as part of the movement of "realism".
Millet was born in Normandy, in the village of Gruchy. In 1838 he moved to Paris to study art, but after 1840 he turned away from the official painting style and came under the influence of the artist Daumier. In 1849 he withdrew to the village of Barbizon to concentrate on painting, many, often poetic, peasant scenes.
One of the most well known of Millet's paintings is The Gleaners (1857), depicting women stooping in the fields to clear the leftovers from the harvest, this is a powerful and timeless statement about the working class. Picking up what was left of the harvest was regarded as one of the lowest jobs in society. However, Millet offered these women as the heroic focus of the picture. In bestowing quiet nobility upon three women working in the field, Millet interpreted labour, and labouring as noteworthy.
Although he was officially distrusted because of his real or imaginary Socialist leanings, his own attitude towards his chosen theme of peasant life was curiously ambivalent. Being of peasant stock, he tended to look upon farm workers as narrow-minded, and did not accept the notion that `honest toil' was the secret of happiness. In fact, his success partly stemmed from the fact that though compared with most of his predecessors and, indeed, his contemporaries, he focused on realism, he presented this reality in an acceptable form, with a religious or idyllic gloss.
Nevertheless, he became a symbol to younger artists, to whom he gave help and encouragement. Millet encouraged artists such as Boudin and Monet with their work and particularly Pissarro, who shared his political ideals, and inclinations.
Although towards the end of his life, when he started using a lighter palette and freer brushstrokes, his work showed some affinities to the new impressionist style, his technique however, was never really close to theirs. He never painted outside, and he had only a limited awareness of tonal values.
Millets artistic skills appealed to other artists such as Seurat and Van Gogh, who admired his subject matter and its social implications.
Millet died on January 20 1875, sixty one years of age, he left a legacy of realism and heightened social values.
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A Sample of some Francois Millet Paintings
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Click Here To Go Back To Francois Millet reproduction oil paintings
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