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| ART “4”
“2”-DAY 20
January |
| BIRTH: 1829 STANHOPE |
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Died on 20 January 2003: Al(bert)
Hirschfeld [photo >], US show biz caricaturist
born on 21 June 1903.
—
Al Hirschfeld's caricatures captured the vivid personalities of entertainers
and their performances for more than 75 years. |
 ^
Died on 20 January 1900: John
Ruskin, English Romantic
writer, art critic, and painter born on 08 February 1819.— Ruskin's books Modern Painters (1843), which hotly supported Turner’s art, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1848), The Stones of Venice (1851-53) made him critic of the day, later he became the most influential art critic of the Victorian era. He supported artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From 1867, Ruskin held the post of Rede Lecturer in Cambridge, and from 1869-1884 a professorship of fine arts in Oxford. He founded a museum and a drawing school in Oxford, and in Meersbrook a night school for craftsmen. Towards the end of his life Ruskin increasingly suffered from a severe nervous illness. His watercolors and drawings were exhibited from 1873 to 1884 at the Old Water-Color Society. See his Cascade de la Folie, Chamonix (1849), grandly atmospheric view of an Alpine chain, its expansiveness recalls early Turner. — John Ruskin was born at 54 Hunter Street, London, the only child of Margaret and John James Ruskin. His father, a prosperous, self-made man who was a founding partner of Pedro Domecq sherries, collected art and encouraged his son's literary activities, while his mother, a devout evangelical Protestant, early dedicated her son to the service of God and devoutly wished him to become an Anglican bishop. Ruskin, who received his education at home until the age of twelve, rarely associated with other children and had few toys. During his sixth year he accompanied his parents on the first of many annual tours of the Continent. Encouraged by his father, he published his first poem, On Skiddaw and Derwent Water, at the age of eleven, and four years later his first prose work, an article on the waters of the Rhine. In 1836, the year he matriculated as a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he wrote a pamphlet defending the painter Joseph Mallord William Turner [1775-1851] against the periodical critics, but at the artist's request he did not publish it. While at Oxford (where his mother had accompanied him) Ruskin associated largely with a wealthy and often rowdy set but continued to publish poetry and criticism; and in 1839 he won the Oxford Newdigate Prize for poetry. The next year, however, suspected consumption led him to interrupt his studies and travel, and he did not receive his degree until 1842, when he abandoned the idea of entering the ministry. This same year he began the first volume of Modern Painters after reviewers of the annual Royal Academy exhibition had again savagely treated Turner's works, and in 1846, after making his first trip abroad without his parents, he published the second volume, which discussed his theories of beauty and imagination within the context of figural as well as landscape painting. On 10 April 1848 Ruskin married Euphemia Chalmers Gray, and the next year he published The Seven Lamps of Architecture, after which he and Effie set out for Venice. In 1850 he published The King of the Golden River, which he had written for Effie nine years before, and a volume of poetry, and in the following year, during which Turner died and Ruskin made the acquaintance of the Pre-Raphaelites, the first volume of The Stones of Venice. The final two volumes appeared in 1853, the summer of which saw Millais, Ruskin, and Effie together in Scotland, where Millais painted Ruskin's portrait. The next year his wife left him and had their marriage annulled on grounds of non-consummation, after which she married Millais. During this difficult year, Ruskin defended the Pre-Raphaelites, became close to Rossetti, and taught at the Working Men's College. In 1855 Ruskin began Academy Notes, his reviews of the annual exhibition, and the following year, in the course of which he became acquainted with the man who later became his close friend, the Charles Eliot Norton from the US, he published the third and fourth volumes of Modern Painters and The Harbours of England. He continued his immense productivity during the next four years, producing The Elements of Drawing and The Political Economy of Art in 1857, The Elements of Perspective and The Two Paths in 1859, and the fifth volume of Modern Painters and the periodical version of Unto This Last in 1860. During 1858, in the midst of this productive period, Ruskin decisively abandoned the evangelical Protestantism which had so shaped his ideas and attitudes, and he also met Rose La Touche, a young Irish Protestant girl with whom he was later to fall deeply and tragically in love. |
| Throughout the 1860s Ruskin continued
writing and lecturing on social and political economy, art, and myth, and
during this decade he produced the Fraser's Magazine "Essays on
Political Economy" (1863); revised as Munera Pulveris, 1872), Sesame
and Lilies (1865), The Grown of Wild Olive (1866), The
Ethics of the Dust (1866), Time and Tide, and The Queen
of the Air (1869), his study of Greek myth. The next decade, which
begins with his delivery of the inaugural lecture at Oxford as Slade Professor
of Fine Art in February 1870, saw the beginning of Fors Clavigera,
a series of letters to the working men of England, and various works on
art and popularized science. His father had died in 1864 and his mother
in 1871 at the age of ninety. In 1875 Rose la Touche died insane, and three years later Ruskin suffered his first attack of mental illness and was unable to testify during the Whistler trial when the artist sued him for libel. In 1880 Ruskin resigned his Oxford Professorship, suffering further attacks of madness in 1881 and 1882; but after his recovery he was re-elected to the Slade Professorship in 1883 and delivered the lectures later published as The Art of England (1884). In 1885 he began Praeterita, his autobiography, which appeared intermittently in parts until 1889, but he became increasingly ill, and Joanna Severn, his cousin and heir, had to bring him home from an 1888 trip to the Continent. He died at Brantwood, his home near Coniston Water. — English critic and social theorist. During the mid-19th cent. Ruskin was the virtual dictator of artistic opinion in England, but Ruskin's reputation declined after his death, and he has been treated harshly by 20th-century critics. Although it is undeniable that he was an extravagant and inconsistent thinker (a reflection of his lifelong mental and emotional instability), it is equally true that he revolutionized art criticism and wrote some of the most superb prose in the English language. Early Life Educated by his wealthy, evangelical parents, Ruskin was prepared for the ministry, and until 1836 he spent his mornings with his domineering mother, reading and memorizing the Bible. In 1833 the family went on the first of its many tours of Europe, and the boy ardently studied nature and painting. His stay (1836-1840) at Oxford resulted in his winning the Newdigate Prize for poetry and in his determining not to enter the ministry. A breakdown of health in 1840 forced him to travel. Critic and Reformer The first volume of Ruskin's Modern Painters appeared in 1843. This work started as a defense of the painter J. M. W. Turner and developed into a treatise elaborating the principles that art is based on national and individual integrity and morality and also that art is a "universal language. He finished the five volumes in 1860. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) applied these same theories to architecture. In 1848, Ruskin married Euphemia Gray, a beautiful young woman with social ambitions; the union, which apparently was never consummated, was annulled in 1854, and Mrs. Ruskin subsequently married the painter John Everett Millais. From his position as the foremost English art critic, Ruskin in 1851 defended the work of the Pre-Raphaelite group. His third great volume of criticism, The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), maintained that the Gothic architecture of Venice reflected national and domestic virtue, while Venetian Renaissance architecture mirrored corruption. About 1857, Ruskin's art criticism became more broadly social and political. He wrote Unto This Last (in Cornhill Magazine, 1860) and Munera Pulveris (in Fraser's Magazine, 1862-1863). These works attacked bourgeois England and charged that modern art reflected the ugliness and waste of modern industry. Ruskin's positive program for social reform appeared in Sesame and Lilies (1865), The Crown of Wild Olive (1866), Time and Tide (1867), and Fors Clavigera (8 vol., 1871-1884). Many of his suggested programs-old age pensions, nationalization of education, organization of labor-have become accepted doctrine. He was made the first professor of art in England (Slade professor, Oxford, 1870) and his lectures were well attended. His multifarious activities broke down his health, however, and in 1878 he suffered his first period of insanity. Recurrences of unbalance became more frequent, though some of his greatest prose, the autobiography Praeterita (1885-1889), was written in the lucid intervals. — Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (photo) — Portrait by Millais — RUSKIN ART LINKS — A River in the Highlands (1847, 17x27cm; half size _ ZOOM to full size) — Zermatt (1844) — Cascade de la Folie, Chamonix (1849) — Rose la Touche (94kb) — Christ Church, Oxford. — WRITINGS OF RUSKIN ONLINE: The King of the Golden River — The King of the Golden River — The King of the Golden River — Sesame and Lilies — Unto This Last — Unto This Last (zipped) — "Work" (Lecture I, The Crown of Wild Olive) — About some writings of Ruskin |
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Born on 20 January 1829: John
Roddam Spencer Stanhope, English Pre-Raphaelite
painter who died on 02 August 1908. — Spencer-Stanhope was one of the most important followers of Burne-Jones. He was a member of the group of artists which worked on the Oxford Union murals. His style owes a lot to Burne-Jones, yet Stanhope's color is stronger and less subtle, his drawing is harder and in general the softness and stillness of his master is lacking. His choice of subject-matter and interest in technique is individual. Eve Tempted (1877) is a striking and slightly unnerving interpretation of the serpent in the Garden of Eden whispering into Eve's ear as she stands under the Tree of Knowledge, on a faux-naïf early Renaissance carpet of flowers. Stanhope was in love with the Tuscan landscape and with Florentine art, and spent the latter part of his life in Florence. Stanhope was the uncle and teacher of the painter Evelyn De Morgan née Pickering [1855-1919], who often went to stay with him in Florence. — Stanhope came from an aristocratic, monied background, and was educated at Eton and Oxford. His parents were opposed to his becoming an artist. Though older than Burne-Jones, Stanhope was strongly influenced by him and was initially a follower of his. As Stanhope matured as an artist he developed his own distinctive style. His works were allegorical and mythical, and he was a great colorist. Initially Stanhope studied under G. F. Watts, with whom he visited Italy twice in the 1850s. Stanhope worked on the unsuccessful murals at the Oxford Union also in the 1850s, meeting Rossetti at that time. Stanhope suffered severely from asthma, which led him to move to Florence in 1880. Burne-Jones felt that Stanhope’s art suffered from his move to Italy, which took him away from his artistic milieu, and the painter regarded himself as an exile. Florence remained Stanhope's home for the rest of his life, and he painted frescoes in the Anglican church there. Stanhope, Strudwick, and Evelyn de Morgan who were all influenced by Burne-Jones, produced beautiful decorative pictures. — Photo of Stanhope — LINKS — The Waters of Lethe by the Plains of Elysium (1880, 147x282cm; 501x1000pix, 359kb _ ZOOM to 1240x2477pix, 1447kb) — Love and the Maiden (138x201cm; 684x1000pix, 267kb) _ Considered by many to be Stanhope's masterpiece, it was bought at Christie’s in 1997 by Australian collector John Schaeffer, for £727'500. In January 2003 he sold it at a profit to the Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, for the Californian Palace of the Legion of Honor museum. —The White Rabbit (56x81cm) — Psyche and Charon (1000x739pix, 116kb) — Our Lady of the Watergate (122x61cm; 700x357pix, 45kb) {No! It is NOT Nixon's secretary Rose Mary “18-1/2 minute gap” Woods. Actually the 20 June 1972, 11:26-11:45 gap was probably not an accidental erasure by her but a deliberate one by someone else, possibly Chief of Staff Alexander Haig} [Nixon's Watergate affair] |
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Died on 20 January 1875: Jean-François
Millet, French Realist
painter, draftsman, and etcher, born on 04 October 1814. — He is famous primarily as a painter of peasants. Although associated with the Barbizon School, he concentrated on figure painting rather than landscape except during his final years. His scenes of rural society, which nostalgically evoke a lost golden age, are classical in composition but are saturated with Realist detail. Millet’s art, rooted in the Normandy of his childhood as well as in Barbizon, is also indebted to the Bible and past masters. His fluctuating critical fortunes reflect the shifting social and aesthetic lenses through which his epic representations of peasants have been viewed. — The son of a prosperous peasant family in northern France, Millet devoted his career to painting rural life. Successive French governments favored his monumental images of peasants and their close relationship to the land, along with his fine etchings and drawings. But Millet’s often uncompromising illustrations of rural poverty were severely criticized and remain among the starkest depictions of people brutalised by hard labor. Although Millet lived in the countryside and only depicted rural subjects all his major pictures were exhibited at the salon in Paris. Millet had nine children with his lifelong companion Catherine Lemaire, but only married her with a religious ceremony on his deathbed. — The son of a small peasant farmer of Gréville in Normandy, Millet showed a precocious interest in drawing, and arrived in Paris in 1838 to become a student of Paul Delaroche. He had to fight against great odds, living for long a life of extreme penury. He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1840, and married two years later. At this time, the main influences on him were Poussin and Eustache Le Sueur, and the type of work he produced consisted predominantly of mythological subjects or portraiture, at which he was especially adept (Portrait of a Naval Officer). His memories of rural life, and his intermittent contacts with Normandy, however, impelled him to that concern with peasant life that was to be characteristic of the rest of his artistic career. In 1848 he exhibited The Winnower (now lost) at the Salon, and this was praised by Théophile Gautier and bought by Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, the Minister of the Interior. In 1849, when a cholera epidemic broke out in Paris, Millet moved to Barbizon on the advice of the engraver Charles-Émile Jacque (1813-94) and took a house near that of Théodore Rousseau. Devoted to this area as a subject for his work, he was one of those who most clearly helped to create the Barbizon School. His paintings on rural themes attracted growing acclaim and between 1858 and 1859 he painted the famous Angélus, which 40 years later was to be sold for the sensational price of 553'000 francs. 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 farmworkers as narrow-minded and oblivious of beauty, 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 was a ‘Realist’, 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. It was he who, on a visit to Le Havre to paint portraits, encouraged Boudin to become an artist, and his work certainly influenced the young Monet, and even more decidedly so Pissarro, who shared similar political inclinations. Although towards the end of his life, when he started using a lighter palette and freer brushstrokes, his work showed some affinities with Impressionism, his technique was never really close to theirs. He never painted out-of-doors, and he had only a limited awareness of tonal values, but his draughtsmanship had a monumentality that appealed to artists such as Seurat and van Gogh, who was also enthralled by his subject-matter, with its social implications. Millet's career was greatly helped by Durand-Ruel. — Jean-François Millet reste la figure emblématique de Barbizon. nul autre que lui, parmi les paysagistes du XIXème siècle, n'a autant attaché son nom à ce modeste hameau seine-et-marnais, aujourd'hui village au renom international. La querelle est vaine de savoir si Jean-François Millet doit infiniment à ce village qui le mit sur le vrai chemin de son génie en lui offrant les thèmes de son chant de la terre, lui rappelant le milieu rural de sa jeunesse. En tout cas, cette dette est aujourd'hui largement acquittée par la gloire universelle qu'il a, à jamais, apportée à Barbizon. Un grand nombre de peintres, ceux que l'on désigne communément sous le vocable d' École de Barbizon, ont avant lui, en même temps que lui, et après lui, contribué à la notoriété de ce célèbre village, mais c'est Jean-François Millet qui, durant ses vingt-cinq années vécues à Barbizon - avec quelques rares escapades vers le Bourbonnais, la Franche-Comté et son Cotentin natal — par sa passion sans limite pour ce village et son entière identification avec la vie de ses habitants et leurs occupations, consacra Barbizon pour lui bâtir une notoriété exceptionnelle dans notre pays, comme bien au-delà de nos frontières. Jean-François Millet est né à Gruchy, minuscule hameau dépendant de la commune voisine de Gréville-Hague, à 9 km à l'ouest de Cherbourg. Il était le second d'une lignée de huit enfants. Son père, Jean-Louis Nicolas Millet avait épousé Aimée Henriette Adélaïde Henry, celle que l'on appelait la "du Perron" car, sans faire partie de cette petite noblesse terrienne si fréquente dans les campagnes, elle appartenait à une certaine élite paysanne, sans avoir pour autant apporté l'aisance à son mari. Une grand-mère qu'il adorait et un grand-oncle surtout, l'aidèrent à parfaire son instruction. Ce dernier, un prêtre "habitué", rendant seulement quelques services à la paroisse et retiré dans sa famille, prépara l'enfant à la scolarité. Deux autres prêtres lui apprirent le latin et l'initièrent à l'étude des Anciens, en particulier Virgile, pour lequel toute sa vie, il professa une grande admiration. Durant sa jeunesse, Jean-François Millet montra peu d'empressement à fréquenter l'école de Gréville, mais son intelligence était déjà très vive, et s'il avait du mal à retenir les leçons de son maître, il préférait déjà dessiner sur les feuilles de son cahier d'écolier, voire avec un simple morceau de charbon de bois, des objets ou visages qui l'avaient frappé sur le chemin de l'école. Ces penchants précoces furent rapidement remarqués par sa famille, et en 1832, il avait alors dix-huit ans, son père le conduisit auprès d'un élève de David, Dumouchel, vieux rapin impénitent qui enseignait le dessin à Cherbourg. Celui-ci fut conquis par les dons prometteurs du jeune Millet et encouragea ses parents à le laisser aborder une carrière artistique. En novembre 1832, celle-ci faillit s'arrêter là. Son père venait de mourir et les travaux de la ferme familiale réclamaient ses bras : il retourna donc à Gruchy. Mais il faut croire que les travaux des champs ne l'inspirèrent guère puisque, quelque temps après, sous la pression de ses amis qui l'avaient remarqué, mais surtout grâce à la complicité de sa grand-mère, il retourna travailler à Cherbourg dans l'atelier du peintre Langlois qui avait été élève de Gros. Peu de temps suffirent à Langlois pour se rendre compte qu'il tenait en son élève Jean-François Millet un véritable artiste et il n'eut aucune peine à faire voter par le Conseil municipal de la ville une subvention annuelle de 1000 F qui autorisa enfin Jean-François Millet à tourner ses regards vers la capitale, où il débuta dans l'atelier de Paul Delaroche, un des pontifes de l'art académique de l'époque. Mais les enseignements de Delaroche ne passionnaient guère Millet qui préférait les longues stations contemplatives devant les chefs-d'œuvre de Poussin ou de Delacroix qu'abritaient les musées du Louvre ou du Luxembourg. Malgré la bienveillance du maître, les passions qui agitaient l'atelier lui firent abandonner celui-ci et préférer le dur apprentissage de son métier d'artiste, exécutant des pastels dans le goût du XVIIIème siècle, alors en vogue, allant même jusqu'à peindre des enseignes de boutiques qu'on lui on lui payait cinq ou six francs et des nus féminins qui l'aidèrent à subsister. Ce fut là une des époques les plus sombres de sa vie, qui allait en comporter d'autres. Les subsides de Cherbourg arrivaient alors très irrégulièrement et Millet se rendit plusieurs fois dans cette ville pour les réclamer, occupant son temps à peindre des portraits de famille ou quelques rares paysages haguais, mais sa vocation de paysagiste n'était pas encore affirmée. Il séjourna au Havre qui était déjà le port important orienté vers le grand large, où il exécuta plusieurs portraits d'armateurs ou de capitaines au long cours, et parfois des compositions qui lui étaient commandées, comme celles de Pauline-Virginie Ono qui s'éprit de lui, et qu'il épousa en 1841, mais cette union ne fut pas heureuse. Pauline Ono, de tempérament maladif et de faible constitution, n'était guère en état de partager les privations que la nature robuste de Millet supportait plus facilement. Et c'est dans le travail qu'il se jeta pour préparer ses premiers envois au Salon de 1842 qui, d'ailleurs, les lui refusa. Un dernier malheur l'assaillit : la mort de son épouse survenue de 21 avril 1844. Sans relâche, il travaillait pour ces Salons de la capitale dont les cimaises acceptaient seules les compositions historiques ou mythologiques. Celui de 1844 retint néanmoins Une Laitière et Une Leçon d'Équitation qui firent une grande impression sur le critique Théophile Thore. Millet n'était pas de ceux qui pouvaient vivre seuls, dans un célibat tranquille et monotone. Il lui fallait une solide et vigoureuse personne, quelqu'un de son pays, qui puisse accepter son caractère souvent empreint d'un sombre mutisme et dont la santé lui permettrait de devenir la mère de la nombreuse progéniture qu'il souhaitait ardemment. Ce fut Catherine Lemaire, modeste servante originaire de Lorient, rencontrée à Cherbourg, qui l'aimait en silence. Il finit par le savoir et décidèrent de vivre ensemble. Elle ne devait plus le quitter, l'entourant d'une passion admirative jusqu'à sa mort, après lui avoir donné neuf enfants. Après un court séjour au Havre où il continua ses portraits, ils partirent pour Paris en 1844 où ils trouvèrent un logement au 42bis de cette rue Rochechouart qui préfigurait déjà le célèbre «bateau-lavoir» montmartrois de 1904 car une nombreuse colonie d'artistes et d'hommes de lettres y vivaient déjà : Charles Jacque, Diaz, Troyon et beaucoup d'autres. De cette époque datent ses premières rencontres avec ses futurs compagnons barbizonnais. |
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la grande affaire pour tous était la préparation du Salon.
Pour celui de 1846, Millet fit un Saint-Jérôme tenté
par les femmes que Couture, l'ancien condisciple de l'atelier Delaroche
qualifiait de morceau étonnamment superbe. Hélas, encore une
fois, le Saint-Jérôme fut écarté par
le jury du salon. Oedipe détaché de l'arbre par un berger fut l'oeuvre présentée au Salon de 1847 et la critique commença à s'intéresser à Millet, mais c'était encore un tableau qui portait l'empreinte des XVIème et XVIIème siècles, c'est-à-dire encore loin des sujets qui allaient, par la suite, consacrer la gloire du peintre. La révolution de 1848 marque un tournant dans la carrière de Jean-François Millet. Dans la vague de libéralisme qui suivit, le Salon de 1848 fut déclaré ouvert à tous. Les angoisses des peintres qui présentaient des oeuvres en pensant toujours aux susceptibilités des examinateurs et au credo qui guidait immanquablement leurs choix, disparurent. Millet a trente-trois ans. Son esprit est mûr. Désormais, il dédaignera de plus en plus l'art conventionnel, les nudités de fantaisie et les scènes d'imagination empruntées à la Bible ou à la mythologie. Et cette année 1848 se révèle décisive pour Jean-François Millet. Pour le salon, il prépara deux envois: Le Vanneur et La Captivité des Juifs à Babylone. Tout le succès alla au premier, qui constitua son premier début dans le genre où il allait s'illustrer. Pour la première fois, il choisit comme héros le paysan qu'il devait évoquer ensuite dans toutes ses scènes du labeur de la terre. Le Vanneur est l'oeuvre de Jean-François Millet qui rencontra le premier vrai et franc succès. La critique admirait Le Vanneur. Le public cherchait à se renseigner sur cette toile si émouvante dont on lui disait que l'auteur tirait le diable par la queue. Ledru-Rollin, syndic de la ville de Paris, sur les instances de Jeanron, Conservateur du musée du Louvre, rendit visite à Jean-François Millet et lui acheta Le Vanneur, qu'il paya 500 F. Jeanron qui savait Millet en sympathie avec les républicains lui fit, en outre, obtenir une commande de 1800 F à partager néanmoins avec son ami Charles Jacque. C'est le reliquat de cette somme qui devait, plus tard, permettre aux deux artistes de partir pour Barbizon. Le 20 Decembre 1848, un Bonaparte devenait officiellement Prince-Président de la IIème République et un arsenal de lois répressives confortait désormais celui-ci et le nouveau gouvernement en place. Tout cela n'arrangeait pas les affaires des artistes-peintres, ni celles de Jean-François Millet en particulier, qui commençait à mal supporter ces continuels débordements de la rue et qui aspirait au calme et à la tranquillité nécessaire pour terminer ses commandes. Son envoi au Salon de 1849, Une Paysanne Assise, passa presque complètement inaperçue par ces temps troublés. L'épidémie de choléra qui sévissait alors à Paris et que Millet redoutait pour les siens, l'extraordinaire amitié fraternelle qui le liait à Charles Jacque, la petite fortune que les deux hommes possédaient encore, «l'aura» artistique qui entourait déjà Barbizon, toutes les conditions étaient réunies pour l'ouverture de la période la plus prestigieuse de l'histoire du village de Barbizon. - «Où diable pourrions-nous bien aller établir notre campement? demanda Millet. Connaîtriez-vous un endroit où nous pourrions vivre et travailler sans dépasser les limites de notre budget? Moi, vous savez, je ne connais que Gruchy, c'est peut-être un peu loin!» - «Allons du côté de Fontainebleau, rétorqua Charles Jacque ; il y a aux environs un charmant petit hameau, un trou placé sur la lisière de la forêt, et dont le nom finit par Ion . Diaz m'en a beaucoup parlé. Il paraît que le pays est admirable. Ce n'est pas trop loin, nous trouverons sûrement quelque chose par là.» - «Nous avons pris, Jacque et moi, la détermination de rester ici pendant quelque temps» écrivait Millet à son ami Sensier. Ce «quelque temps» devait durer vingt-cinq années. La découverte de la forêt de Fontainebleau émerveilla Jean-François Millet. La campagne autour de Barbizon avec ses paysans au travail lui rappelait son Cotentin natal. C'était là son vrai domaine, celui de son cher Gruchy, mais son destin avait basculé pour en faire un peintre et chanter les louanges du seul travail qui comptât à ses yeux, celui de la terre, qu'il allait magnifiquement glorifier dans les années à venir. C'est durant cette longue période que tant de chefs-d'œuvre virent le jour dans cette modeste maison que lui prêtait Sensier et qui abritait son atelier et sa nombreuse famille. Les Salons restaient toujours son objectif principal mais il commençait à commercialiser sa production, surtout grâce à l'amitié de son ami Sensier. Et ce furent Les Botteleurs et Le Semeur en 1850 (comparer par van Gogh “d'après Millet”: Le Semeur 1 et Le Semeur 2). Au salon de 1853, Millet envoie trois oeuvres: Le Repas des Moissonneurs, Une Tondeuse de moutons et Un Berger. Millet reçoit sa première consécration: une médaille de 2ème classe pour ses Moissonneurs, mais la critique restait très partagée. La vie à Barbizon demeurait très difficile pour Jean-François Millet, mais c'est à cette époque qu'il se lia d'amitié avec Théodore Rousseau, qu'il avait déjà rencontré à Paris, mais qui avait découvert Chailly et Barbizon, dès 1833. Durant les années qui suivirent, toutes les oeuvres maîtresses de Jean-François Millet, orgueil aujourd'hui de tant de musées français ou étrangers, virent le jour dans l'atelier du peintre à Barbizon. Citons, pêle-mêle, les principales: Le Paysan Greffant un Arbre, Le Paysan Répandant du Fumier (1855, 81x112cm), L'Angélus, Les Glaneuses, L'Attente, Le Bout du Village de Gréville, La Becquée, La Grande Tondeuse, etc. Et faudrait-il taire ces autres chefs-d'oeuvre? Comme L'Homme à la Houe qui devait déchaîner tant de passions (1862) — ou La Naissance du Veau (1864) qui allait valoir une seconde médaille à son auteur. Le 14 Aug 1868, Jean-François Millet fut fait chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, consécration dont on n'a peu idée aujourd'hui, mais qui valait l'attribution d'un siège permanent parmi le fameux jury qui présidait chaque année les redoutés et redoutables Salons. La chance commençait donc à tourner pour Jean-François Millet, mais hélas, la maladie continuait à faire des ravages. Ses affreuses migraines qui le tenaillaient depuis tant d'années reprenaient de plus belle. Des quintes de toux le secouaient de longues minutes, ou durant plusieurs heures, lui ôtant toute vigueur et toute énergie. Le 20 janvier 1875, Jean-François Millet, alité depuis la mi-décembre, commença à délirer dans cette petite chambre du premier étage de son atelier de Barbizon. Une vie commencée à Gruchy, soixante et une années auparavant, s'éteignait. Il ouvrit une dernière fois les yeux, promena son regard sur Catherine Lemaire et son frère Jean-Baptiste restés à son chevet, puis prononça ces derniers mots : «C'est dommage, j'aurais pu travailler encore». — LINKS — Mother Feeding her Child (1861; 600x483pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1128pix) — The Whisper (1847; 600x472pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1101pix) — Les Glaneuses (1857; _ ZOOM to 1400x1876pix) — Paysan Plantant un Arbre (1855; 600x752pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1755pix) — Le Coup de Vent (1873, 91x118cm; 487x635pix, 129kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1825pix) _ A powerful gust of wind sweeps across the landscape, uprooting a tree, and almost blowing a man off his feet. Everything in sight, the clouds, leaves, even the artist’s brushstrokes, moves in the direction of the wind. Millet conveys the inconsequence of the human figure in the face of this violent force of nature. The man’s unsteady stance echoes the shape of the windswept tree, but he is considerably smaller. The scene is set on the peninsula of La Hague, which juts out into the English Channel just west of Cherbourg. — The Sheepfold (1868, 72x95cm; 484x635pix, 84kb) _ This image of a shepherd driving his flock into a sheepfold exploits an entrancing weather effect – moonlight shining through mist. Using pastel, Millet describes almost the entire scene in lines radiating from the moon. As the light floods towards us, Millet’s marks change in density and thickness to describe the shadowy forms of the shepherd, his flock and fold. This highly textured effect binds man and nature together as if both were part of the same rich fabric. — L'Angélus (1858 _ ZOOM to 1400x1128pix) — Le Semeur — Shepherdess with her Flock — Glaneuses — Jardin — Burden — Fishermen — The Flight into Egypt — Jeune Femme (1844) — Spring (1870) — Porteurs de Fagots — Bêcheur au travail — Bêcheur Au Repos (1874) — Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz) (1853) — Bringing Home the Newborn Calf (1858) — Vert-Vert, le Perroquet de la Soeur (1839, 33x41cm) — L'Église de Gréville (1874) — 29 prints at FAMSF |
The 1863 painting: L'homme à la houe by
Jean-François
Millet inspired the 15 January 1899 poem The Man
with a Hoe, by US schoolteacher Charles Edward Anson Markham (1852-1940),
who used the penname Edwin Markham.. The poem quickly became as famous as
the painting. Both continue to be moving testimonies to what the too prevalent
inhumanity of humanity can cause. The Man with a Hoe Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave What gulfs between him and the seraphim! |
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O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? |
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, How will the future reckon with this Man? How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores? How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world, After the silence of the centuries? |
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Albert Hirschfeld was born in St. Louis, one of three sons of Isaac and
Rebecca Hirschfeld. 