Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet was a French Realism artist who lived from 1814 to 1875, and who helped found the Barbizon school of art. The Barbizon school used a more naturalistic approach to their work, which was a direct response to the Romantic style that was in vogue at the time.
Millet was born into a peasant family in northern France and often drew inspiration for his works from those early years working on a farm. When he turned 18 years old, his father sent him to study art under the portrait painter, Paul Dumouchel. After two years, he began studying portraiture under Lucien-Théophile Langlois, who provided him enough money to move to Paris and continue his studies.
When Millet moved to Paris in 1837, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. By 1840, he had his first piece accepted at the Paris Salon. Overall, Millet’s early years were rocky. His wife died from consumption, and Millet moved several times from and back to Paris, working as a portrait artist.
After a breakout of cholera hit Paris in 1849, Millet moved with his soon-to-be-wife and children to Barbizon, France (they would get married in 1853 and stay together the rest of his life). There he met the other artists with whom he would eventually form the Barbizon school of art with, including Théodore Rousseau. During the 1850s, Millet’s work had shifted from portraiture to depicting mostly peasants and their day to day. He was even accused of being a socialist. He decided to document the daily lives of these peasants, critiquing the status quo of French society at that time. He was a contemporary of Jules Bastien-Lepage.
As one of the founders of the Realism art movement in France, Millet helped move the country to modernism. Everyone, including artists, were rejecting the status quo, and demanding a more egalitarian society. Instead of glorifying the life of the wealthy, Millet wanted to highlight the lives of the working class; those most often overlooked in art history. And recast their stories as more heroic.
Millet inspired a whole slew of young artists, most notably Vincent Van Gogh, whose “The Sower” was a copy of Millet’s piece of the same name. Van Gogh actually painted 21 pieces based off of Millet’s work. By the 1860s, Millet was in demand. He received many commissions from the State and showed several pieces at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris. He even got a spot as a juror for the Paris Salon exhibitions. Jean-François Millet died in 1875 at 60 years of age.
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