I would like to invite you to look at reproductions of another great artist, Jean Francois Millet, a French painter of rural life. The son of a peasant, he spent his youth among rural nature, helping his father with his farm and field work. Only at the age of 20 did he begin to study drawing in Cherbourg with little-known artists Mouchel and Langlois.

Having moved from Paris to Barbizon, near Fontainebleau, almost never leaving there and even rarely coming to the capital, he devoted himself exclusively to reproducing rural scenes that were intimately familiar to him in his youth - peasants and peasant women at various moments in their working lives.

His paintings of this kind, uncomplicated in composition, executed rather sketchily, without highlighting the particulars of the drawing and without writing out details, but attractive in their simplicity and unvarnished truth, imbued with sincere love for the working people, did not find due recognition among the public for a long time.

He began to become famous only after the Paris World Exhibition of 1867, which brought him a large gold medal. From that time on, his reputation as a first-class artist who introduced a new, living current into French art quickly grew, so that at the end of Millet’s life, his paintings and drawings, for which he had once received very modest money, were already sold for tens of thousands of francs. After his death, speculation, taking advantage of the even more intensified fashion for his works, brought their price to fabulous proportions. So, in 1889, at the auction of the Secret's collection, his small painting: "Evening Good News" (Angelus) was sold to an American art partnership for an amount of over half a million francs. In addition to this picture, to the number best works Millet's works on scenes from peasant life include “The Sower”, “Watching over a Sleeping Child”, “Sick Child”, “Newborn Lamb”, “Grafting a Tree”, “End of the Day”, “Threshing”, “Return to the Farm”, “Spring” "(in the Louvre Museum, Paris) and "Gatherers of Ears of Ears" (ibid.). In the Museum of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, among the paintings of the Kushelev Gallery, there is an example of Millet's painting - the painting "Return from the Forest".

Evening bell

On January 20, 1875, the artist, at the age of 60, died in Barbizon and was buried near the village of Chally, next to his friend Theodore Rousseau.
Millet never painted from life. He loved to walk through the forest and make small sketches, and then reproduce the motif he liked from memory. The artist selected colors for his paintings, striving not only to reliably reproduce the landscape, but also to achieve harmony of color.
His painterly skill and desire to show village life without embellishment put Jean François Millet on a par with the Barbizonis and realistic artists who worked in the second half of the 19th century.

On my own behalf, I would like to say that everything in his paintings is real...: life, people, nature is so beautiful... that you can smell the grass, rain and even the smells of human labor, diligence... He sees life, loves it... and enjoys his work, leaving for descendants moments of the life that the master himself lived.

France has always been famous for its painters, sculptors, writers and other artists. The flourishing of painting in this European country occurred in the 17th-19th centuries.

One of the brightest representatives of the French visual arts is Jean François Millet, who specialized in creating paintings of rural life and landscapes. This is very bright representative his genre, the paintings of which are still highly valued.

Jean Francois Millet: biography

The future painter was born on October 4, 1814 near the city of Cherbourg, in a tiny village called Grushi. Although his family was a peasant family, they lived quite prosperously.

Also in early age Jean's ability to paint began to show. A family where no one had previously had the opportunity to leave their native village and build a career in any field other than the peasantry, the son’s talent was perceived with great enthusiasm.

His parents supported the young man in his desire to study painting and paid for his education. In 1837, Jean Francois Millet moved to Paris, where for two years he mastered the basics of painting. His mentor is Paul Delaroche.

Already in 1840, the aspiring artist demonstrated his paintings for the first time in one of the salons. At that time, this could already be perceived as a considerable success, especially for a young painter.

Creative activity

Jean François Millet did not like Paris too much, who yearned for the countryside landscapes and way of life. Therefore, in 1849, he decided to leave the capital, moving to Barbizon, which was much calmer and more comfortable than noisy Paris.

Here the artist lived the rest of his life. He considered himself a peasant, which is why he was drawn to the village.

That is why his work is dominated by scenes of peasant life and rural landscapes. He not only understood and empathized with ordinary farmers and shepherds, but he himself was part of this class.

He, like no one else, knew how difficult it was for ordinary people, how difficult their work was and what a miserable lifestyle they led. He admired these people, of whom he considered himself a part.

Jean Francois Millet: works

The artist was very talented and hardworking. During his life, he created many paintings, many of which are today considered true masterpieces of the genre. One of the most famous creations of Jean Francois Millet is “The Ear Pickers” (1857). The painting became famous for reflecting all the heaviness, poverty and hopelessness of ordinary peasants.

It depicts women bent over ears of grain, because otherwise they cannot collect the remains of the harvest. Despite the fact that the picture demonstrated the realities of peasant life, it aroused mixed feelings among the public. Some considered it a masterpiece, while others spoke sharply negatively. Because of this, the artist decided to soften his style a little, demonstrating the more aesthetic aspects of village life.

The canvas "Angelus" (1859) demonstrates the talent of Jean Francois Millet in all its glory. The painting depicts two people (husband and wife) who, in the evening twilight, pray for people who have left this world. The soft brownish halftones of the landscape and the rays of the setting sun give the picture a special warmth and comfort.

In the same 1859, Millet painted the painting “Peasant Woman Herding a Cow,” which was created by special order from the French government.

At the end of his creative career, Jean Francois Millet began to pay more and more attention to landscapes. Everyday genre faded into the background. Perhaps he was influenced by the Barbizon school of painting.

In literary works

Jean François Millet became one of the heroes of the story “Is He Alive or Dead?”, written by Mark Twain. According to the plot, several artists decided to embark on an adventure. Poverty pushed them to do this. They decide that one of them will fake his death, having thoroughly publicized it beforehand. After his death, prices for the artist’s paintings will have to skyrocket in price, and there will be enough for everyone to live on. It was Francois Millet who became the one who played his own death. Moreover, the artist personally was one of those who carried his own coffin. They achieved their goal.

This story also became the basis for the dramatic work “Talents and Dead Men,” which is now shown at the Moscow Theater. A. S. Pushkin.

Contribution to culture

The artist had a huge influence on French and world painting in general. His paintings are highly valued today, and many are exhibited in major museums and galleries in Europe and the world.

Today it is considered one of the most prominent representatives everyday rural genre and a magnificent landscape painter. He has a lot of followers, and many artists working in a similar genre are one way or another guided by his works.

The painter is rightfully considered the pride of his homeland, and his paintings are the property of national art.

Conclusion

Jean François Millet, whose paintings are true masterpieces of painting, made an invaluable contribution to European painting And world art. He rightfully stands on a par with the greatest artists. Although he did not become the founder of a new style, did not experiment with technology and did not seek to shock the public, his paintings revealed the essence of peasant life, demonstrating all the hardships and joys of the life of village people without embellishment.

Such frankness in canvases, sensuality and truthfulness can not be found in every painter, even famous and eminent ones. He simply painted pictures about what he saw with his own eyes, and not only saw, but felt himself. He grew up in this environment and knew peasant life inside out.

Jean François Millet (French Jean-François Millet, October 4, 1814 - January 20, 1875) - French artist, one of the founders of the Barbizon school.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST

His father served as an organist in a local church, one of the future artist’s uncles was a doctor, and the other was a priest. These facts say a lot about the cultural level of the future artist’s family. Millet s early years worked on a farm, but at the same time received a good education, studied Latin and retained a love of literature throughout his life. Since childhood, the boy showed an ability to draw.

In 1833 he went to Cherbourg and entered the studio of the portrait painter du Mouchel. Two years later, Millet changed his mentor - his new teacher was the battle painter Langlois, who was also the caretaker of the local museum. Here Millet discovered the works of the old masters - primarily Dutch and Spanish artists of the 17th century.

In 1837, Millet entered the prestigious Parisian School of Fine Arts. He studied with Paul Delaroche, a famous artist who painted several theatrical canvases on historical themes. Having quarreled with Delaroche in 1839, Jean Francois returned to Cherbourg, where he tried to earn his living by painting portraits.

In November 1841, Millet married the daughter of a Cherbourg tailor, Pauline Virginie Ono, and the young couple moved to Paris. At this time, Millet abandoned portraiture, moving on to small idyllic, mythological and pastoral scenes, which were in great demand. In 1847, he presented at the Salon the painting “Child Oedipus being taken down from a tree,” which received several favorable reviews.

Millet's position in the art world changed dramatically in 1848. This was partly due to political events, and partly due to the fact that the artist finally found a topic that helped him reveal his talent.

He received a government order for the painting “Hagar and Ishmael,” but, without finishing it, he changed the subject of the order. This is how the famous “ear pickers” appeared. The money received for the painting allowed Millet to move to the village of Barbizon near Paris.

The 1860s turned out to be much more successful for the artist. Having once found his path, the artist never left it and managed to create a number of very serious works that were extremely popular among artists and collectors. Millet is rightfully considered almost the most sought-after painter of his time.

On January 20, 1875, the artist, at the age of 60, after a long illness, died in Barbizon and was buried near the village of Chally, next to his friend Theodore Rousseau.

CREATION

Subject peasant life and nature became the main thing for Millet.

He painted peasants with a depth and insight reminiscent of religious images. His unusual manner brought him well-deserved recognition that is timeless.

His works are interpreted in completely different ways. The artist’s work seemed simultaneously directed both to the past and to the future. Some found in Millet’s paintings nostalgia for patriarchal life, which collapsed under the onslaught of bourgeois civilization; others perceived his work as an angry protest against the oppression and oppression of the peasants. Past and future meet not only in Millet's themes, but also in his style. He loved the old masters, which did not prevent him from feeling like he belonged among realist artists. Realists rejected the historical, mythological and religious subjects that had long dominated “serious” art and focused on the life around them.

The words “peace” and “silence” best characterize Millet’s paintings.

On them we see peasants, mainly, in two positions. They are either absorbed in work or taking a break from it. But this is not a “low” genre. The images of the peasants are majestic and deep. WITH youth Millet never tired of going to the Louvre, where he studied the works of the old masters. His paintings, distinguished by their transparency and solemnity, were especially admired and attracted.

When it comes to color, Millet was undeniably a 19th-century artist. He knew what “living” color was and skillfully used sharp contrasts of light and shadow. Often the artist would cover the bottom layer of paint with another, using a dry brush technique, which allowed him to create a hard, textured surface. But Millet usually painted backgrounds very softly and smoothly. A canvas consisting of “different textured” parts - characteristic feature his manners.

When Millet thought about and painted his own paintings, he, in a sense, followed the precepts of the artists of the past. For each of them, as a rule, he made a lot of sketches and sketches - sometimes using the services of models, and sometimes giving free rein to his imagination.

Until the 1860s, Millet did not seriously engage in landscape painting. Unlike his Barbizon friends, he did not paint from life. Millet recalled the rural landscapes needed for paintings from memory. That is why there are so many views of Normandy on the artist’s canvases, where he spent his childhood. Other landscapes were recreated from sketches written in the 1860s near Vichy, where Millet’s wife was improving her health on the advice of doctors.

In the mid-1840s, Millet tried to make a living by creating light and carefree paintings, stylizing the then fashionable Rococo style. These were mythological and allegorical paintings, as well as paintings of light erotic content depicting nude female nature (for example, “Reclining Nude Woman”). Nymphs and bathers appeared on Millet’s canvases of that time; he also painted pastorals, depicting the rural world as an earthly paradise, and not an arena of exhausting struggle for a piece of bread. The artist himself called these works executed in a “flowery style.” This includes the painting “Whisper”, 1846 (another title is “Peasant Woman and Child”).

MILLET'S INFLUENCE ON THE WORK OF OTHER ARTISTS

Later, Millet's paintings were promoted as examples to follow in communist countries, where culture was built on the principles of “socialist realism.”

He was delighted with the painting “Angelus”, creating a surreal version of it.

“Angelus” generally played a huge role in establishing Millet’s posthumous fame. The rest of his work was in the shadow of this canvas.

Moreover, it was his popularity that contributed to the fact that Millet’s name became associated with the characteristic “sentimental artist”. This formula was completely wrong. The artist himself did not consider himself such. And only very recently, after Millet’s large exhibitions in Paris and London (1975-76), the artist was rediscovered, revealing in its entirety his unique artistic world.

In 1848, the famous critic and poet Théophile Gautier wrote enthusiastically about the painting “The Winnower”:

“He throws whole layers of paint onto his canvas - so dry that no varnish can cover it. You can't imagine anything more raw, furious and exciting."

JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET

Art is not a walk, it is a struggle, it is a fight.

Jean Francois Millet

In the world of art there are masters who have the amazing ability to embody their love or hatred, commitment to their time or its denial in a surprisingly clearly defined, unusually vividly perceived series of plastic images. These artists enchant us and captivate us immediately and forever, as soon as we begin to study their work, peer into their canvases, listen to the music of their paintings.

The mysterious world of Rembrandt. A ghostly light streams. Shadows flicker. Golden twilight reigns. We wander enchanted. Haman, Esther, Danae, Prodigal son- not the ghostly faces of distant legends and myths, but living, living people, suffering, yearning, loving. In the darkness, precious stones and golden luxurious decorations shine and sparkle, and next to this vain splendor are the dilapidated rags of poor old men and women, ancient and wise. The night watch is walking towards us. The armor sparkles. The weapon rings. Priceless lace rustles. Silks rustle. But this is not what strikes us in the paintings of Rembrandt van Rijn. The Man himself, great and insignificant, gentle and cruel, honest and treacherous, stands before us...

In a moment we are flying into the abyss. Goya. A frantic, furious moment takes possession of our soul. Black night sky. Next to us, witches and ghouls are rushing and somersaulting with laughter and screeching - visions created by the author of "Caprichos". Spain. The bulls are roaring. Wounded horses scream. The eyes of seductive gestures sparkle. Degenerate kings and princes smile smugly. Gun salvoes thunder, and Spain's best sons fall to the ground. And all this is Goya! Only Goya!

We leisurely walk past the sweetly snoring, corpulent gluttons painted by Pieter Bruegel and see the distant, promised and wondrous Land of Lazy People. And suddenly we shudder when a string of ominous and wretched blind people passes near us with screams and groans, rattling sticks, hobbling, stumbling and falling, reminding us of the frailty of the world. A minute later, red-nosed revelers surround us and grab us by the arms. We spin in a whirlwind of dance and dance until we drop in the square of a village unfamiliar to us. We are seized with horror, and we feel the chilling breath of Death. This is Bruegel. Pieter Bruegel - sorcerer and sorcerer.

An endless plowed field. Morning. You can hear the sound of silence. We feel the infinity of earth and sky. A young giant rises in front of us. He walks slowly, scattering golden grains of wheat widely. The earth, wet with dew, breathes serenely. This is the world of Jean Francois Millet... We are trying to catch up with the Sower, but he goes ahead. We hear the measured beat of his mighty heart. A moment - and we are wandering through the shady, cool forest. We listen to the conversation of the trees. The crackling of brushwood, the clatter of wooden clogs. And again we are in the field. Golden stubble. Dusty haze. Heat. High at the zenith a lark sings. Stacks, stacks. Harvest. We are suffocating from the heat, drenched in sweat, collecting spikelets together with stern peasant women, bronzed from the tan. Millet! It was he who sang the hard and back-breaking peasant labor. It was he who generously and forever left all the music of morning and evening dawns, the many colors of rainbows, the freshness of blossoms. All the unusualness of the ordinary.

Rembrandt, Bruegel, Goya, Millet. Artists are infinitely different. But the art of each of them, as well as many other great masters, entered our souls. And, often observing the phenomena of today's life, we immediately remember their canvases and mentally exclaim: just like in a painting by Leonardo or Rembrandt, Surikov or Millet! So deeply have these wonderful worlds, born in the crucible of human passions, entered our flesh and blood. After all, the painters who created these images were just people with all their worries and joys. Years, sometimes centuries, have passed since the birth of their canvases. But they live. True, hardly anyone will see with their own eyes the flight of Goy’s witches or the fantastic faces of Bruegel’s insights. The world created by Leonardo, Surikov or Millet has left us a long time ago.

Pieter Bruegel. Peasant dance.

But we are convinced, deeply convinced of the artistic truth of their paintings. The faith of these masters in the greatness of the human spirit, in Man, is passed on to us, and we learn to understand our complex, complex, complex world today...

Let's turn to one of these wonderful masters - Jean Francois Millet. To a sincere, pure, honest artist. His life was a feat.

Not everyone imagines the true destiny of many outstanding French painters of the last century. We sometimes have some lightened ideas about their almost rosy fate. Perhaps the ringing, festive, joyful words - attic, Montmartre, Barbizon, plein air - obscure from us the naked poverty, hunger, despair, loneliness that such excellent masters of the 19th century experienced as Rousseau, Millet, Troyon, Dean, Monet, Sisley. But the closer we get to know their biographies, the more menacing and severe the tragic struggle of each of these masters appears. With lack of recognition, adversity, with blasphemy and reproach. After all, only a few, and then too late, achieved fame. But let's return to Millet.

It all started out rather banal. One January day in 1837, a stagecoach, rumbling over the cobblestones, entered Paris, black with soot and soot. At that time, the fashionable term “smog” did not yet exist, there was no fumes from thousands of cars, but the dirty, gray, piercing fog, saturated with stench, roar, noise, and bustle stunned the young peasant guy, accustomed to the clean, transparent air of Normandy and silence. Jean François Millet set foot on the land of this “new Babylon”. He was twenty-two years old. He is full of hope, strength and... doubts. Millet joined the thousands of provincials who came here to win a place in the sun. But Jean Francois is not at all like the daring heroes of the novels of Honore de Balzac, who saw Paris at their feet in advance. The young artist was unusually shy. His spiritual world was blown up by the spectacle of the city at night. Dim orange light from street lamps. Turbulent purple shadows on slippery sidewalks. A gray, soul-piercing, dank fog. Boiling lava of people, carriages, horses. Narrow street gorges. Unfamiliar, stuffy smells choked the breath of a resident of the English Channel, raised on the seashore. Jean Francois, with some desperate poignancy, remembered the small village of Grushi, his home, the wild beauty of the surf, the buzz of the spinning wheel, the singing of the cricket, the wise instructions of his beloved grandmother Louise Jumelin. Sobs rose in his throat, and the future artist burst into tears right on the Parisian pavement.

“I tried to overcome my feelings,” said Millet, “but I couldn’t, it was beyond my strength. I managed to hold back my tears only after I scooped up water from the street fountain with my hands and poured it on my face.”

The young man began to look for a place to stay for the night. The evening city grumbled dully. The last scarlet rays of dawn colored the chimneys of the dark buildings. Fog took over Paris. Saturday. Everyone was rushing somewhere headlong. Millet was timid beyond measure. He was embarrassed to ask for the hotel address and wandered around until midnight. You can imagine how much "genre" he could see on Saturday's panels. He had a surprisingly sharp eye that remembered everything. He was handsome, this Jean Francois. Tall, bearded, strong, with the neck and shoulders of a Cherbourg stevedore. But he had only one peculiarity that was difficult for life - a gentle, easily wounded soul, sensitive, pure. Otherwise, he probably would not have become the great Millet that France is proud of today. We emphasize the word “today” because he will spend almost his entire life in uncertainty. And so Jean wanders around Paris at night. Finally he found furnished rooms. Millet later recalled:

“All that first night I was haunted by some nightmares. My room turned out to be a stinking hole where the sun did not penetrate. As soon as it was dawn, I jumped out of my lair and threw myself into the air.”

The fog cleared. The city, as if washed, shone in the rays of dawn. The streets were still deserted. Lonely cab driver. Wipers. Silence. There is a cloud of crows in the frosty sky. Jean went out to the embankment. A crimson sun hung above the twin towers of Notre Dame. The Isle of Cité, like a sharp-chested ship, sailed on the heavy, leaden waves of the Seine. Suddenly Jean Francois shuddered. He slept on the bench next to him bearded man. The scarlet rays of the sun touched the tired, pale, haggard face and slid over the worn dress and broken shoes. Millet stopped. Some painful, hitherto unknown feeling came over him. He had seen tramps before, beggars, degenerates, dirty and drunk. This was something different. Here in the heart of Paris, next to the cathedral Notre Dame of Paris, this humiliation of a Man, still young, full of strength, but somehow did not please the City seemed especially cruel... The thought instantly flashed: “But it could have been me.” Passing under the dark arches of the bridge, Jean Francois saw several more unfortunate men and women sleeping side by side. He finally realized that Paris is not always a holiday. If only he knew that ten years after hard study, work and noticeable success in art, he would still be standing on the threshold of the same hopeless need, instability, the collapse of all hopes! All this was hidden from the aspiring artist. But the meeting left a heavy aftertaste.

“That’s how I met Paris,” Millet later recalled. “I didn’t curse him, but I was overcome with horror because I understood nothing about his everyday or spiritual existence.”

Paris. The first worries, worries, and sadness arrived. Yes, sadness that did not leave him for a single day, even in the happiest moments.

“Enough! - the reader will exclaim. “Yes, young Millet, obviously, was a complete melancholic and misanthrope!”

The fact is that the young man, brought up in a Puritan spirit in a patriarchal peasant family, could not accept the Parisian way of life.

In those days, people still rarely used the word “incompatibility”; science had not yet determined the important place of this concept in biology, in medicine, in human life.

Obviously, the young Millet gave us one of the most striking examples of this very incompatibility.

He still has a lot to endure and suffer in Paris. This is not to say that he had no bright moments at all. But there were terribly few of them.

"I don't curse Paris." The whole of Millet is in these words. Noble, open, devoid of bitterness or revenge. He will have to live in this city for twelve years. He went through a lot of life school here...

He studied painting with the chic but empty Delaroche, the king of the Salons, who said about Millet:

“You’re not like everyone else, you’re not like anyone else.”

But noting the student’s originality and strong will, Delaroche added that the rebellious Millet needed an “iron stick.”

Peasant women with brushwood.

Hidden here is another of the main character traits of the aspiring painter - an unyielding will, which coexisted well in his soul with tenderness and kindness.

From his earliest steps in art, Millet did not accept lies, theatricality, or sugary salon. He said:

“Boucher is just celadon.”

The artist wrote about Watteau, ironizing the affectation of the characters in his paintings, all these marquises, thin-legged and delicate, clad in tight corsets, bloodless from holidays and balls:

“They remind me of dolls, whitened and rouged. And as soon as the performance is over, all these brethren will be thrown into a box, and there they will mourn their fate.”

His peasant gut did not accept refined theatricality. Jean Francois, as a young man, plowed the land, mowed, and harvested grain. He knew, damn it, the value of life, he loved the earth and man! Therefore, he was at odds with Delaroche, whose entire school was built on a purely external vision of the world. His students diligently copied and painted ancient sculptures, but almost none of them knew life. Peers made fun of Jean Francois, considering him a hillbilly, but they were afraid of his strength. The nickname Forest Man stuck behind him. The young painter worked hard and... was silent.

But a crisis was brewing.

Millet decided to become independent. We would be wrong if we did not emphasize the riskiness of this step. A poor student who has neither a stake nor a yard in Paris, and the luminary of the Salon, the darling of the Parisian bourgeoisie, glorified by the press as “the great Delaroche.”

It was a riot!

But Millet felt the strength and rightness of his convictions. He leaves Delaroche's workshop. The teacher is trying to get the student back. But Millet is adamant. This was a continuation of the same incompatibility that, as is known, rejects a transplanted foreign heart from the body. Millet the Norman could never become Millet the Parisian. The young artist valued personal freedom and the truth of art most of all. This is the motto of his entire life:

“No one will force me to bow! He won’t force you to write for the sake of Parisian living rooms. I was born a peasant, and I will die a peasant. I will always stand on my native land and will not retreat a single step.” And Millet did not retreat either before Delaroche, or before the Salon, or before hunger and niches, etc. But what did it cost him! Here is a scene from Millet's life that will tell us a lot.

Attic. Frost on a broken window sealed with strips of paper. A rusty, long-extinct stove. In front of her is a pile of ash on an iron sheet. Gray frost on antique plaster torsos, on piles of stretchers, canvases, cardboard and easels. Millet himself sits on a large chest where studies and sketches are stored. Big, stocky. He has changed a lot since the day he arrived in Paris. The facial features sharpened. The eyes were deeply sunken. The first threads of silver appeared in his thick beard. Eleven years of life in Paris are not trivial. Especially if you have your own harsh path in art, if you don’t haunt the thresholds of bourgeois living rooms, don’t act.

...It was getting dark quickly. The oil in the lamp was running out. The charred wick only smoldered, at times flaring up brightly, and then awkward crimson shadows wandered and crawled along the damp walls of the studio. Finally, the light of the lamp flashed for the last time. Blue twilight rushed into the attic. It became completely dark. The artist’s hunched figure, shriveled from the cold, was drawn in black silhouette against the background of glass painted with frost. Silence. Only blue and purple mischievous reflections ran across the ceiling of the studio - the lights of Paris, “the most fun city in the world.” Somewhere behind the walls of the studio, the well-fed, luxurious life of the bourgeois capital was in full swing, restaurants were sparkling, orchestras were thundering, carriages were racing. All this was so far and, however, so close... Almost close. But not for artists, who are looking for their language of truth, the Salon does not cater to their tastes. A sudden creak broke the sad silence.

Come in,” Millet almost whispered.

A beam of light entered the workshop. On the threshold stood Sansier, a friend of the painter. He brought one hundred francs - an allowance for the artist.

“Thank you,” said Millet. - This is very useful. We haven't eaten anything for two days. But it’s good that even though the children didn’t suffer, they had food all the time... He called his wife. I'll go buy some firewood because I'm very cold.

It seems that it is inappropriate to comment on this scene depicting the life of one of the great artists of France. That year Millet was already thirty-four years old, he managed to create a number of excellent portraits, by the way, executed in the best traditions French art. Among them is a wonderful painting depicting Jean François’s beloved grandmother Louise Jumelin, who did so much to develop the character of the future master. “Portrait of Pauline Virginie Ono,” Millet’s first wife, who died early and could not bear the severe hardships of life in Paris, is written subtly and lyrically. The hand of a magnificent painter can be felt in the coloring, composition, and sculpting of the form. Oh, if Millet had chosen the path of a fashionable portrait painter! His family, he himself would never know adversity. But a career as a fashion artist was not needed by young Jean Francois. He did not want to repeat the tragedy of Gogol's Chartkov, unknown to him. Millet was already on the threshold of creating masterpieces. This required another blow of fate, another test.

And it came.

... Millet had a family, children. I had to somehow earn my daily bread. And the young artist occasionally fulfilled small orders for scenes from ancient myths. Jean Francois reluctantly wrote trinkets, thinking that all these pictures would sink into oblivion and they could be forgotten... But in life nothing passes without a trace!

One fine spring day, Millet wandered around Paris. He did not feel all the charm of spring. Thoughts about failures in life, lack of money, and most importantly, about aimlessly wasting time on small earnings were persistent. The longing intensified, longing for Normandy, for the expansive fields, the high sky of the homeland. He saw his home, his mother, his grandmother, his relatives. He was sad. March painted the city's landscape in bright, jubilant colors. The azure sky overturned into turquoise puddles, through which pink and lilac clouds floated. A trembling transparent haze rose from the heated stones of the pavement. Spring was gaining strength. Suddenly Jean Francois stopped at a bookstore, in the window of which colorful lithographs, leaf reproductions of paintings were hung, and books were laid out. Two elderly men were giggling near the display window, looking at frivolous scenes from mythology where frisky young goddesses had fun with muscular, well-built young gods. Millet came closer and saw his painting among the reproductions. She seemed monstrously sweet to him. And to top it all off I heard: “This is Millet, he writes nothing but this.” The son of a peasant, a native of Normandy, a master who deeply despised this leaf genre in his soul, he, Jean Francois Millet, who devoted all the heat of his heart to the peasant theme, was killed! Insulted, humiliated, he did not remember how he got home.

“As you wish,” Millet said to his wife, “and I won’t deal with this daub anymore.” True, it will be even more difficult for us to live, and you will have to suffer, but I will be free to do what my soul has been yearning for for a long time.

His faithful wife Catherine Lemaire, who shared with him long life, joys, hardships and hardships, answered briefly:

I'm ready!

Do what you like…

In the life of every true artist there comes a moment when he must cross some invisible threshold that separates him, a young man full of illusions, hopes, high aspirations, but who has not yet said his word in art, who has not yet created anything cardinal, from the moment when before He faces the task in all its enormity - to find and give to people new beauty, not yet discovered by anyone, not yet known, not expressed by anyone.

At that moment when Millet decided to starve, but not disgrace his brush, exchanging for salon academic crafts, that same “Dante of the hillbilly”, “Michelangelo of the peasant”, whom the whole world knows today, was born.

How important it is in the hour of making a decision to have a person nearby who is ready to go with you to a feat. How many gifts, talents, weaker in character, found their death in the love of their dear spouses for golden trinkets, furs and all those endlessly caressing little things that are included in the banal concept of “high life”!

Millet was not alone. In addition to his faithful, devoted and intelligent wife - the daughter of a simple worker from Cherbourg - his advisers, the great artists of the past, were always next to him. In the most bitter, seemingly hopeless moments of Parisian life, there was a house in which Millet always found good advice and could rest his heart and soul. It was the Louvre. Starting from the very first days of his stay in Paris, the brightest hours in the life of young Jean Francois were communication with the great masters of the past, with their art.

“It seemed to me,” Millet said about the Louvre, “that I was in a long-familiar country, in my own family, where everything I looked at appeared before me as the reality of my visions.”

The young artist deeply felt the great simplicity and plasticity of Italian artists of the 15th century. But most of all the young painter was shocked by Mantegna, who had unsurpassed power of the brush and a tragic temperament. Jean Francois said that painters like Mantegna have incomparable power. They seem to throw armfuls of joy and sorrow with which they are filled in our faces. “There were moments when, looking at the martyrs of Mantegna, I felt the arrows of Saint Sebastian piercing my body. Such masters have magical powers.”

But, of course, the true deity for the young master was the giant of the High Renaissance, Michelangelo. These are the words that reflect all his love, all his admiration for the genius of Buonarroti:

“When I saw Michelangelo’s drawing,” he said, “depicting a man in a faint, the outline of these relaxed muscles, the depressions and reliefs of this face, dead from bodily suffering, gave me a strange sensation. I myself experienced his suffering. I felt sorry for him. I suffered in his body and felt pain in his limbs... I realized, Millet continued, that the one who created this is capable of embodying all the good and all the evil of humanity in one single figure. It was Michelangelo. To say this name means to say everything. Long ago, back in Cherbourg, I saw several of his faint engravings, but now I heard the heartbeat and voice of this man, whose irresistible power over me I have felt all my life.”

Perhaps someone will find such “neurasthenicity” strange, such extraordinary sensitivity in a guy who had flourishing health and extraordinary strength, a man with the powerful hands of a plowman and the soul of a child. But perhaps this very hypersensitivity contained that psychological impulse that gave rise to the phenomenon whose name is Jean Francois Millet.

This does not mean that the young master had even the slightest bit of immaturity. Hear what he has to say about the painting process and French artist Poussin:

“The picture must first be created in the mind. The artist cannot make her immediately appear alive on his canvas - he carefully, one by one, removes the covers that hide her.” But these are almost the words of Poussin: “In my mind I already saw her in front of me, and this is the main thing!”

Catching birds with a torch.

The influence of such outstanding masters of world art as Michelangelo, Mantegna, and Poussin on the process of maturation of young talent was enormous. Their invisible help performed a true miracle. A rural boy, a provincial, who studied in the workshop of the most banal Delaroche, having experienced the charms of Parisian academic and salon painting, nevertheless survived and found the strength to create paintings that eventually conquered both the Salon and its adherents - “yellow” journalists and newspapermen. From the first steps, Millet's art was characterized by a high sense of responsibility as an artist. Listen to his words:

“Beauty is not in what and how is depicted in the picture, but in the artist’s felt need to depict what he saw. This very necessity generates the force required to complete the task.”

“Felt necessity” is that same high citizenship, that purity of spiritual impulse, honesty of heart, which helped Millet to be faithful to the truth of art. Millet said more than once with a feeling of bitterness:

“For us, art is simply decoration, decoration of living rooms, whereas in the old days, and even in the Middle Ages, it was a pillar of society, its conscience...”

"The conscience of society." Everything could be said about the Paris Salon: magnificent, brilliant, dazzling, grandiose. But, alas, salon art had no conscience. This creativity was chic, sparkling, soul-stirring, if you like, even virtuosic, but the short word “truth” was not in honor here.

The Paris Salon lied!

He told lies in huge, tall buildings with lush decorations, against the background of which the heroes of myths - gods and goddesses, helmeted Roman emperors, lords - gesticulated and recited Ancient East. The puffy muscles, spectacular draperies, angles, streams of fire and blood in the endless bacchanalia and battles created by salon luminaries were fictitious, stilted, and false.

Seductive landscapes depicted happy citizens of France - the land of fun and joy. But the well-fed and plump, jubilant peasants and peasant women, acting out simple genre scenes “from rural life”, were also at least a fairy tale - so far were those varnished canvases from life. This art, lackey, empty and vulgar, filled the walls of the Salon. The aroma of perfume, powder, incense, and incense hung in the air of the opening days.

And suddenly the fresh wind of the fields, the aroma of meadows, and the strong smell of peasant sweat burst into the atmosphere of this incense. Millet appeared at the Salon. It was a scandal!

But before we talk about the battles of Jean Francois Millet with the Paris Salon, I would like to figure out who needed such an accumulation of vulgarity and bad taste. Why was the Salon needed and its endlessly changing fashion rulers - the lions of secular drawing rooms, the luminaries of vernissages. This question was best answered by the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

“Sovereigns always look with pleasure at the spread among their subjects of inclinations towards the arts that provide only pleasant entertainment... In this way they cultivate in their subjects spiritual pettiness, so convenient for slavery.”

The painting of the Paris Salon, despite the large-format canvases and the roar of enchanting compositions, was fully consistent with the “education of pettiness in its subjects.” This was no less facilitated by the endless canvases with naked and half-naked nymphs, shepherdesses, goddesses and simply bathers. The Parisian audience of the Salon - the petty bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie - were quite happy with such a masquerade, replacing life. And the audience rejoiced. Decency, splendor and a certain comme il faut reigned in the air of the Salon, but sometimes this atmosphere exploded with innovative artists - Géricault, Delacroix, Courbet... Among the troublemakers was Jean François Millet.

Imagine for a moment the dressed-up, perfumed, exhausted audience of the Paris Salon of the second half of the last century, exhausted from cramped space and stuffiness. The huge halls of this “sanctuary of art” are filled to capacity with dozens and hundreds of paintings. The groans of the first Christians, the clanging of gladiators' swords, the roar of the biblical flood, the sweet melodies of shepherds' pastorals flow from the walls of the Salon. What tricks of coloring, such puzzling angles, mysterious plots, the sweetest nudes was not equipped with the next vernissage! What an expanse of vulgarity, what a sea of ​​falsehood and bad taste! And in the midst of all this gold-framed extravaganza, a small canvas appears before the jaded spectators.

Human. One. Stands in the middle of an endless field. He's tired. And for a moment he leaned on the hoe. We hear his ragged breathing. The wind brings to us the crackling of burning fires, the bitter aroma of burning grass eats our eyes. A peasant in a rough white shirt. Torn, old pants. Sabo. Face, dark from tan, scorched by the sun. The sockets of the eye sockets are like an antique mask. The open mouth greedily catches air. The hands of overworked hands are heavy with clumsy, knotty fingers like tree roots. The metal of the hoe, polished on the hard ground, glitters in the sun. The peasant peers into the elegant crowd surrounding him. He is silent. But his muteness makes the question hidden in his steep eyebrows even more terrifying.

"Why?" - ask invisible eyes, hidden in shadow.

"Why?" - ask hands mutilated by overwork.

"Why?" - ask the question of the drooping shoulders, the bent, sweat-covered back of a man hunched over prematurely.

The free wind hums and hums, walking through the wasteland overgrown with weeds and thistles. The sun burns mercilessly, revealing all the disorder and loneliness of a person. But neither the wind, nor the sun, nor the sky itself can answer why this far from old man should live in poverty from cradle to grave, working from dawn to dusk. And yet, despite all the hardships and troubles, he is powerful, he is great, this Man!

And he's scary. Scared by his silence.

Imagine how the just amiable, cheerful, flushed faces of the beautiful spectators of the Salon and their gentlemen, shiny with prosperity, were distorted with a grimace of surprise, horror, and contempt.

The man is silent.

Man with a hoe.

Whether Jean François Millet wanted it or not, the silent question contained in the small canvas contains all the pathos of exposing the injustice of the existing system. To do this, he did not need to fence off the multi-planted colossus, populate it with dozens of extras, and did not need to light the sparklers of idle talk. This is the power of Millet, the power of the plastic embodiment of an artistic image. The only one, unique, devoid of any stiltiness. Because every painting, big or small, must be based on artistic truth. What marked the work of so many different masters, such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya, Surikov, Courbet, Millet, Daumier, Manet, Vrubel, Van Gogh... and of course Pieter Bruegel the Elder Muzhitsky.

But isn’t it time for us to return again to Jean François Millet himself, whom we left in Paris to make an important decision - “to quit the daub and start new life»?

Millet's words did not diverge from the deeds. He had a strong peasant character and pure Norman tenacity. In 1849, he and his family left Paris with all its splendor, bustle, and noise, which endlessly disturbed Jean Francois and prevented him from painting his cherished canvases. He arrives in Barbizon, a remote village. Millet thought that he would settle here for a season - to draw, to pee.

But fate decided otherwise.

The artist lived here until his death in 1875, for more than a quarter of a century. In Barbizon he created his best canvases. And no matter how difficult it was for him, there was land nearby, beloved, dear, there was nature, simple people, Friends.

One of his closest artistic comrades was Theodore Rousseau, a remarkable French landscape painter. Here is an excerpt from a letter that Millet sent to Paris, to Rousseau, when he temporarily left Barbizon on business:

“I don’t know what your wonderful celebrations are like in Notre Dame Cathedral and the city hall, but I prefer those modest celebrations with which I am greeted as soon as I leave the house, trees, rocks in the forest, black hordes of crows in the valley or what - some dilapidated roof, above which smoke curls from the chimney, intricately spreading in the air; and you will recognize from it that the hostess is preparing dinner for the tired workers who are about to arrive home from the field; or a small star will suddenly flash through a cloud - we once admired such a star after a magnificent sunset - or someone’s silhouette will appear in the distance, slowly rising up a mountain, but is it possible to list everything that is dear to someone who does not consider the rumble of an omnibus or the shrill the grinding sound of a street tinsmith - the best things in the world. But you won’t admit such tastes to everyone: there are gentlemen who call it eccentricity and reward our brother with various nasty nicknames. I am only confessing this to you because I know that you suffer from the same illness...”

Is it necessary to add anything to this cry of the soul, in love with the quiet charm of immortal nature? Millet said more than once that there is nothing more pleasant than lying down in the ferns and looking at the clouds. But he especially loved the forest.

If only you could see how good the forest is! - he said. “I sometimes go there in the evening, when I finish my day’s work, and every time I return home in confusion. What terrible calm and grandeur! Sometimes I really feel afraid. I don’t know what these rakal trees are whispering about, but they are having some kind of conversation, and the only reason we don’t understand them is because we speak different languages, that’s all. I don't think they were just gossiping.

But the painter did not see in the village, in the fields surrounding him, only an idyll, a kind of Eden. These are approximately his words, in which you clearly feel the birth of the plot of “The Man with a Hoe,” already known to you from the Paris Salon of 1863.

“I see the corollas of dandelions, and the sun when it rises far, far from here and the flame flares up among the clouds. But I also see horses in a field, steaming with sweat as they pull a plow, and on some rocky patch a man exhausted; he works from early morning; I hear him gasping and feel him straighten his back with effort. This is a tragedy amidst splendor - and I didn’t come up with anything here.”

... Somewhere far away were Paris, the Salon, and enemies. It truly seemed like life could start all over again. But it was not there. The large family demanded funds, but there were none. Painting was also not a cheap activity. Paints. Canvases. Models. It's all money, money, money. And again and again Millet was faced with a persistent question: how to live? At the time of creating your own best picture“The Ear Gatherers”, in 1857, the artist was in despair, on the verge of suicide. Here are lines from a letter revealing the hopelessness of Millet's needs.

“I have complete darkness in my heart,” he wrote. “And ahead everything is black and black, and this blackness is approaching... It’s scary to think what will happen if I don’t manage to get money for the next month!”

The artist’s experiences were aggravated by the fact that he could not see his beloved mother. There was no money to go visit her. Here is a letter from a mother to her son, already a famous artist, but, unfortunately, did not have a few extra francs to visit Grushi’s native village.

“My poor child,” the mother wrote, “if only you had come before winter came! I’m so homesick, all I can think about is to look at you just one more time. For me, everything is already over, only torment and death are left for me. My whole body hurts, and my soul is torn as I think about what will happen to you, without any remedy! And I have neither peace nor sleep. You say that you really want to come and see me. And I really want it! Yes, apparently you have no money. How do you live? My poor son, when I think about all this, my heart is simply not in the right place. Oh, I still hope that, God willing, you will suddenly get ready and come when I stop waiting for you completely. And I can’t bear to live, and I don’t want to die, I really want to see you.”

The mother died without ever seeing her son.

These are the pages of Millet's life in Barbizon. However, Jean Francois, despite all adversity, grief, despair, wrote, wrote, wrote. It was during the years of the most severe hardships that he created his masterpieces. This is the response of a true creator to the blows of fate. Work, work despite all troubles!

The first masterpiece created in Barbizon was The Sower. It was written in 1850.

... The Sower strides widely. The arable land is humming. He walks majestically, slowly. Every three steps right hand he takes a handful of wheat out of the bag, and instantly a golden scattering of grains flies up in front of him. It flies up and falls into the black wet soil. Epic power emanates from this small canvas. Human. One on one with the earth. Not a hero ancient myth- a simple man in a worn shirt, in broken clogs, walks, walks across a wide field. The crows are screaming, soaring over the edge of the arable land. Morning. In the gray haze on the slope there is a team of oxen.

Spring. The sky is whitish and cold. Chilly. But the earthworker's face shines. Sweat, hot sweat poured down like a copper-forged face. The primordial, ancient mystery of the birth of a new life illuminates Millet’s canvas. The harsh romance of everyday life permeates the picture.

A true hero of the history of the human race stepped towards the depraved, pampered spectator of the Paris Salon.

Not a biblical saint, not an eastern ruler, not Caesar - His Majesty the People himself appeared on Millet’s canvas...

The great silence of spring. The air rings with the awakening juices of the earth, swollen with dew. You can almost tangibly feel how the arable land is breathing, awakened by the plow, ready to receive the life-giving seed. The Sower walks wide, wide. He smiles, he sees tens, hundreds, thousands of his brothers walking next to him on this bright morning and bringing new life to the earth and people. He sees the sea, the sea of ​​bread. The fruits of the labors of their hands.

A grenade exploded in the Salon. Such was the resonance caused by this small canvas. The idle scribblers agreed to the point that they saw a “threat of a commoner” in a handful of grain in the hands of a sower.

He supposedly throws not grain, but... buckshot.

You say - nonsense?

Maybe. So, the scandal broke out.

Millet's style of painting was called "beggar style". The master himself said, not without humor, that when he sees his canvases next to the polished, varnished canvases of the Salon, “he feels like a man in dirty shoes who finds himself in a living room.”

Like Virgil, Millet slowly unfolded the epic of rural life before the viewer. The school of Mantegna, Michelangelo, and Poussin allowed him to create his own language, simple, monumental, and extremely honest. The painter's love for nature, for the earth is the love of a son. Few of the artists on our planet throughout history have such a sense of this invisible umbilical cord connecting man to the earth.

It would be unfair to say that true art connoisseurs did not notice The Sower. Here is what Théophile Gautier wrote:

“Gloomy rags dress him (the sower), his head is covered with some strange cap; he is bony, lean and emaciated under this livery of poverty, and yet life comes from his broad hand, and with a magnificent gesture he, who has nothing, sows the bread of the future on the earth... There is grandeur and style in this figure with a powerful gesture and proud posture, and it seems that he is written by the land he sows.”

Gatherers of ears of grain.

But these were only the first signs of recognition. Great success was still very, very far away. The main thing is that “The Sower” did not leave any of the viewers indifferent or indifferent. There were only “for” or “against”. And that meant a lot.

"Gatherers of ears of grain." 1857 One of Millet's most significant paintings. Perhaps the apotheosis of his work. This painting was created during the years of the most difficult trials in life.

August. Stubble scorched by the heat. The sun is beating down mercilessly. The wind, hot, smelling of dust, carries the chirping of grasshoppers and muffled human talk. Ears of ears. Our daily bread. The prickly stubble meets the hands of peasant women looking for spikelets with stiff bristles. Hunger and the coming winter drove these women here. Village need. Poor. Bronze, tanned faces. Faded clothes. All signs of hopeless need. “Certificate of Poverty” - the paper gives the right to collect spikelets, and this is considered a benefit. At the edge of the field there are huge stacks and carts loaded to the brim with sheaves. The harvest is rich!

But all this abundance is not for these women, bent over three times. Their destiny is need. Ear pickers. After all, these are sisters, the wives of the mighty Sower. Yes, they collect an insignificant part of the abundant harvest they sow.

And again, whether Jean François Millet wants or not, the question confronts us in all its grandeur.

Why does all the abundance, all the wealth of the earth fall into the wrong hands? Why does a worker who has grown a crop eke out a miserable existence? What about others? And again, whether the author wanted it or not, the civic nature of his canvas shakes the sacred foundations of his contemporary society. Three women are silent, collecting spikelets. We don't see facial expressions. Their movements are extremely stingy, in which there is not an iota of protest, much less rebellion.

And, however, the idle critic from the Le Figaro newspaper imagined something similar. He yelled from the newspaper page:

“Remove the little children! Here are the collectors from the town of Millet. Behind these three pickers, the faces of popular uprisings and the scaffolds of ’93 loom on the gloomy horizon!”

So the truth is sometimes worse than bullets and buckshot. Millet's paintings established a new beauty in the art of France in the 19th century. It was “the extraordinary of the ordinary.” Is it true.

And only the truth.

Life went on. Two years after the creation of “The Ear Gatherers,” Millet, already a well-known artist, writes to one of his friends. The letter is dated 1859, the year the Angelus was created.

“We have two or three days left of firewood, and we just don’t know what to do, how to get more. My wife is due to give birth in a month, but I don’t have a penny...”

"Angelus". One of the most popular paintings in world art. Millet himself talks about the origins of its plot: “Angelus” is a picture that I painted, thinking about how once, working in the field and hearing the ringing of a bell, my grandmother did not forget to interrupt our work so that we could reverently read... “Angelus” for the poor dead."

The strength of the picture lies in the deep respect for the people who worked in this field, who loved and suffered on this sinful earth. The humanistic beginning is the reason for the wide popularity of the canvas.

Years passed. Millet penetrated deeper and deeper into the very essence of nature. His landscapes, deeply lyrical, unusually finely resolved, truly resonate. They are, as it were, a response to the dream of the painter himself.

"Haystacks." Twilight. Lilac, ashen haze. Slowly, slowly the pearl sail of the young moon floats across the sky. The spicy, bitter aroma of fresh hay, the thick smell of warm earth are reminiscent of the sparkling sun, the multicolored meadows, bright summer day. Silence. The clatter of hooves sounds dull. Tired horses trudge. It’s as if huge haystacks are growing out of the ground. But just recently the wind carried the ringing laughter of girls, the laughter of boys, the cold screech of steel braids, measured, hard. Somewhere nearby the work of mowers was still in full swing. It's getting dark. The haystacks seem to melt in the approaching darkness. Sancier said that Millet worked “as easily and naturally as a bird sings or a flower opens.” “Haystacks” is a complete confirmation of these words. By the end of his life, the artist had achieved complete relaxation and incomprehensible subtlety.

in 1874 Jean Francois Millet painted his last canvas - “Spring”. He is sixty years old. This is his will...

"Spring". It was raining. The whole world, as if washed, sparkled with fresh colors. Thunder still rumbles in the distance. Gray, leaden masses of thunderclouds are still crawling across the sky, crowding each other. A purple lightning flashed. But the victorious sun broke through the stifling captivity of the clouds and lit up a semi-precious rainbow. Rainbow - the beauty of spring. Let the bad weather frown, the cheerful wind will drive the slate clouds away. We hear how the young, as if newly born, earth, young grass, and shoots of branches breathe freely. Quiet. Suddenly a single drop fell with a crystal ringing sound. And again silence. Small houses huddled to the ground. White doves soar fearlessly high in the menacing sky. The blossoming apple trees are whispering about something. The master's muse is as young as ever.

“No, I don’t want to die. This is too early. My job is not done yet. It's barely starting." These words were written by one of the greatest artists of the XIX century - Francois Millet.