marvellous results he has achieved with such a simple theme is worthy of our praise. The whole effect is so natural that we are apt to forget the keen sense of composition that was needed to present the subject in such an attractive form.

Millet seems particularly to have been impressed with the loneliness of the peasant’s labour. Take, for example, that wonderfully luminous canvas, “The Sheep Pen.” Here, in the midst of a vast plain, a large space is marked out in which to enclose the sheep for the night. The sun, sinking low in the horizon, warns the shepherd that the time has arrived for him to call together his flock and place them in safe quarters for the night. Accompanied by his faithful dog, he stands at the opening of the pen allowing the sheep to enter two or three at a time. There is no other living soul in sight. Alone he has kept guard over the flock during the long day, with no other company than his dog and his own thoughts. He is dead to the beauties of the landscape around him, and sees nothing more in a field than how much corn can be raised each year from it, or in the sheep he tends so carefully how much mutton it will make. He feels nothing of the glorious beauties of the sunset, of which he is so often a witness; how it softens the lines of the horizon and suffuses the distant woods and plain with its golden rays. He sees nothing of the changes momentarily occurring in the sky: how the blues get fainter and fainter, how the clouds are tinged with opalescent hues, the shadows prolonging themselves as the orb sinks deeper and deeper; or how, finally, when the sun has disappeared, the whole heavens are lighted up in one blaze of glory. Yet Millet would have us understand that in spite of this, the shepherd is performing a duty to humanity not to be underrated. The sheep he has so carefully and conscientiously reared will form food to-morrow for many a hungry town-dweller. Further, he would have us follow the peasant as he closes the pen for the night and traces his tired steps towards his simple home in the village. The frugal and hard-earned meal, prepared for him by his wife, who like himself has had her share of duties to occupy her during the day, is partaken of surrounded by a hungry and joyous group of children. Such themes suggested by the simplicity of his own life appealed to him with irresistible force, and it is in their portrayal that his greatness is manifested.

Perhaps no season of the year presented the same attraction for Millet as the spring. The period when all the earth after its long winter sleep is about to waken into new life seems to have always been a source of inspiration to him. In “The Sower” he emphasises the fact that the fruits of the harvest are not to be had without due labour being expended upon the earth. The sloping field, barren of vegetation, and crowned at the top with a small clump of trees, is being broken up by the distant plough drawn by two horses and guided by a peasant. The latter figure is one of the noblest of Millet’s creations. By his strained and ever-attentive attitude, by his continuous tramp over the rough and broken ground, he shows us the monotony of his toil. He crosses the field in one direction, only to return at an interval of a few feet. In the foreground we have the sower, a middle-aged man of typical peasant type, on whose left side a bag of seeds is slung. With automatic precision he withdraws a handful, and strews it into the furrows open to receive it. So long as he continues in the same track his labour will be well performed, and hence his task is just as monotonous as that of his fellow-worker higher up in the field. The silhouetting of these two figures against the light is symbolical of the labour to be expended in life before results are forthcoming.

From these remarks it will be seen that in considering the works of Millet, one must not judge him from the standpoint of a mere painter. His brush is only the means to an end, and by its means he is enabled to bring the fruits of his philosophic observation before us in permanent form. It has been charged against the “Angelus” that it was not a remarkably fine piece of painting, that many a young artist of the present generation is infinitely better equipped, technically speaking, than the master who wrought this celebrated canvas. This may in a measure be true, but it must never be forgotten that Millet brought into play exactly the means which could illustrate his meaning in the clearest terms. He had not intended, in painting such a picture, to produce a work which would astonish his fellow artists with its brilliancy of handling or magnificence of colour. He wanted to make the beholder forget the painter and absorb the lesson. This quality runs right through the art of Millet, and it is from this standpoint that we are obliged to weigh his merits.

II
MILLET’S EARLY LIFE

Jean François Millet was born on October 4, 1814, that is at the period when French art, at any rate as far as landscape painting is concerned, had reached its lowest ebb. Throughout the eighteenth century the landscape painter had been hard put to make a living. The taste of connoisseurs throughout the century had been for portraits and interiors, or for those numerous pastoral subjects which were carried out with so much decorative charm by such men as Watteau and Boucher. Such landscape painting as existed was of the type popularised by Vernet; it was built upon a curious mixture of Italian influence coming from Panini and Salvator Rosa. The only evidence of revolt against such a state of affairs we find in the works of Hubert Robert and Moreau. These two, and more especially would I direct the reader’s attention to the latter, struggled hard to break down the conventionalities of the time. They endeavoured to infuse some sense of atmosphere into their pictures, and whilst frequently their trees and figures are painfully formal, they yet stand alone in the French school as the pioneers of a phase of art which was to attain its zenith in the middle of the nineteenth century.

But after the Revolution, and during the whole of the time that France was under the domination of Napoleon, very rigid principles indeed were enforced with regard to the direction that art should take. The innovation which had its commencement in the reign of Louis XVI. swept everything before it as it gained force. Classical art and traditions dominated the whole French school, and no artist, however great his reputation, attempted for many years to swim against the stream. In spite of the principles of liberty and equality which were claimed for all under the new régime, a terribly strict eye was kept upon any innovations which might break out in the form of a naturalistic art. The directors of this new movement failed to see that the conditions which had produced the great Greek and Roman sculptors had passed away, and that the latter’s supremacy was due to the fact that their productions were symbolical of the loftiest thoughts of their own epoch. The art which expresses the ambitions and noblest thoughts of its time will alone endure. These expressions are not applicable to any other condition than those which called them forth, and hence in attempting to purify the rococo which had existed up to the middle of the eighteenth century, by a return to classical traditions, they were only copying that which their predecessors had done, and in so doing left us without any original expression of their own time.

Into such a condition of affairs was Millet born, and he was numbered amongst that little band of men which included Rousseau, Corot,