Jean-François Millet, Diaz de la Peña

National Gallery

To coincide with London Tree Week, we will be celebrating some notable depictions of trees in our collection. Diaz de la Peña's 'Sunny Days in the Forest' is one painting you can join us for a free talk on:http://bit.ly/1EfYTNg


Millet's 

第一位 Millet
Columbia Encyclopedia: Millet or

Milé, Jean François (both: zhäN fräNswä' mēlā') , c.1642–1679, French landscape painter, known as Francisque, b. Antwerp. The Arcadian and imaginary Italian landscapes that are attributed to him (e.g., The Storm; National Gall., London) are painted in the manner of Gaspard Poussin and may be seen in numerous European galleries. His son, Jean François Millet, 1666–1732, was also a landscape painter.]

第二位

Jean François Millet (1814-1875) was one of the French artists who worked in Barbizon, a village near the forest of Fontainebleau. He specialized in rural and peasant scenes.

Jean François Millet was born in Gruchy near Gréville on Oct. 4, 1814. His parents were peasants, and he grew up working on a farm. In 1837 Millet moved to Paris to study painting. To learn the traditions of classical and religious painting, he entered the studio of Paul Delaroche, a successful academic imitator of the revolutionary romanticist Eugène Delacroix. But Delaroche severely criticized the unsophisticated Millet, and the young artist's official schooling soon ended. He nevertheless stayed on in Paris, supporting himself by making pastel reproductions of rococo masters, occasional oil portraits, and commercial signs.
In 1841 Millet married Pauline Ono, who died in 1844. In 1845 the artist married Catherine Lemaire. During these years Millet continued to develop his painting, and like nearly all of his contemporaries, he sought recognition in the annual Parisian Salons. One of his portraits was accepted by the Salon of 1840; two pictures were included in the Salon of 1844; and he received special praise for the Winnower in the Salon of 1848. An 1845 exhibition at Le Havre was also moderately successful for the artist.
During the 1840s Millet's painting gradually shifted from classical and religious subjects to scenes of the rural and peasant life with which he was familiar. As it did, he gained increasing support and recognition from other painters in his generation. Among these were Narcisse Diaz de la Peña and Théodore Rousseau, two landscape painters who were instrumental in forming the loose association of artists known as the Barbizon school. Millet and the other Barbizon artists resisted the grand traditions of classical and religious painting, preferring a direct, unaffected confrontation with the phenomena of the natural world. During the 1830s and 1840s their works were generally regarded as crude, unfinished, and unacceptable to the official tastes of the Parisian Salons. After mid-century, however, the Barbizon artists slowly gained increasing recognition, and their achievement became an important inspiration for the younger generation of impressionists.
Millet moved to Barbizon in 1848. The picturesque village became his home for the rest of his life, and he died there on Jan. 20, 1875. During that period he produced his most mature and celebrated paintings, including the Gleaners (1857), the Angelus (1857-1859), the Sower (1850), and the Bleaching Tub (ca. 1861). The works are characterized by breadth and simplicity; they generally depict one or two peasant figures quietly engaged in earthy or domestic toil. With sweeping, generalized brushwork and a monumental sense of scale, Millet consistently dignified his characters and transformed them into heroic pictorial beings.
During the late 19th century Millet's paintings became extremely popular, particularly among American audiences and collectors. As more radical styles appeared, however, his contribution became partially eclipsed; to eyes accustomed to impressionism and cubism, his work appeared sentimental and romantic. But these are the vicissitudes of taste, and they should not obscure the deep feelings about man and soil that his masterpieces continue to express.

Further Reading

A comprehensive survey of the Barbizon school and Millet's relation to it is Robert L. Herbert, Barbizon Revisited (1962).
史書說他的素描影響更大為多名藝術家所崇敬--一些標本圖
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這是從小說Magus 引出的一小段 或許只要求讀懂第一句即可

Self-denial was incomprehensible to him, unless it formed part of some aesthetic regimen. I stood with him once and watched a line of peasants laboring a turnip field. A Millet brought to life. And his only remark was: It is beautiful that they are they and that we are we. For him even the most painful social confrontations and contrasts, which would have stabbed the conscience of even the vulgarest nouveau riche, were stingless. Without significance except as vignettes, as interesting discords, as pleasurable because vivid examples of the algedonic polarity of existence.

Jean-François Millet was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers; he can be categorized as part of the Realism art movement. Wikipedia

Born: October 4, 1814, Gréville-Hague, France

Died: January 20, 1875, Barbizon, France

On view: National Gallery of Art, MORE

Periods: Realism, Barbizon school

Education: École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts

Known for: Painting

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Today is Jean-François Millet’s birthday. The artist, born on this day in 1814, is known for his social realist paintings. “Waiting” (1860) is on view in the Bloch Galleries.

讓·弗朗索瓦·米勒（Jean-François Millet，1814年10月4日－1875年1月20日）法國巴比松派畫家Millet lived all year round at Barbizon。以鄉村風俗畫中感人的人性在法國畫壇聞名。習慣被稱作米勒，實際按照法語發音應翻作“米葉”。

vignette (vĭn-yĕt')

vignette

vignette
vignette [vin‐yet], any brief composition or self‐contained passage, usually a descriptive prose sketch, essay, or short story. The term also refers to a kind of decorative design sometimes found at the beginning or end of a chapter in a book; these were often based on vine‐leaves.