The National Gallery in London is currently hosting "Millet: Life on the Land," a small but captivating free exhibition that marks the first UK show of Jean-François Millet's work since 1976. The centerpiece is his famous painting "L'Angelus" (1857-59), on loan from the Musée d'Orsay, which once became the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.
The painting's history reveals the complex relationship between art and society in 19th-century France. Belgian collector Jules Van Praet, despite calling it "clearly a masterpiece," returned the work to Paris because he found the constant imaginary church bells tiresome. In 1889, it sold for a record-breaking 553,000 francs, then resold a year later for 750,000 francs to department store magnate Alfred Chauchard, who eventually bequeathed it to the Louvre.
"L'Angelus" depicts two peasants frozen in devotion, reciting the evening prayer as twilight falls over a pink-tinged landscape with a distant church. The figures are firmly outlined and massive, silhouetted against the sky with their heads increasingly bowed over a basket of potatoes. Preparatory drawings show how Millet deliberately enhanced their humility, creating not individual portraits but emblems of endurance and humanity's harmony with nature.
Millet, the son of a wealthy Norman farmer, drew from personal experience when he declared himself the "peasant's peasant." He remembered how his grandmother would stop work in the fields whenever the church bell rang to recite the Angelus prayer for the departed. This nostalgic image captured a ritualized moment of religious, pre-industrial time when the thrice-daily Angelus bell followed the rhythms of agricultural work.
The artist made his reputation with "The Winnower" (1847-48), now owned by the National Gallery. This roughly painted figure in clogs and a rebel's red scarf separates wheat from chaff, sending golden dust gleaming through a gloomy interior. The painting excited audiences at the 1848 Salon for its apparently revolutionary credentials and was purchased by Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, a minister in the new Republican government.
Millet's "The Sower" series (1848-50) features a commanding figure striding forward with a bag over his shoulder, descending a steep slope while throwing seeds that are scavenged by menacing black birds scattered across the darkening sky. Art critic Théophile Gautier wrote that "this figure seems to be painted with the very earth that he is sowing." "The Wood Sawyers" (1850-52) followed, depicting sinewy, vigorous men bent over a felled trunk, their deep blue trousers, brilliant white shirts, and red tunics shining from the predominantly ochre palette.
Despite the apparent political implications of his work, Millet insisted he was not to be taken for a socialist. He belonged to the group of realists who settled in Barbizon, a village on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest, working directly from nature and rejecting conventional Salon religious and historical subjects. This approach paved the way for Impressionism, though Millet's art was anything but naive – it represented sophisticated, carefully staged naturalism with sculptural, almost statuesque figures set in dramatic landscapes of light and shade.
Millet's unique position as a figure painter among the Barbizon landscapists made him more provocative during France's mid-century political instability. In 1848, Gautier approved that "Millet has everything it takes to exasperate the bourgeoisie." Urban critic Charles Baudelaire deplored Millet's peasants in 1859, calling them "solemn as priests, pedants who think too highly of themselves." In 1863, critics condemned "Man with a Hoe" as depicting a "barbaric cretin."
The Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) marked a turning point in Millet's reception. As France sought social cohesion under the nascent Third Republic, these same peasant paintings were embraced as patriotic statements celebrating the French countryside that was central to national identity. At this time, three-quarters of the population were still agricultural workers, making Millet's subjects particularly resonant.
This period saw Millet begin to influence modern art's great social empathizers, Camille Pissarro and Vincent van Gogh. Both artists painted peasants developed from Millet's rounded, strongly contoured, dignified portrayals. Pissarro famously stood and wept before "L'Angelus" while simultaneously denouncing its "idiotic sentimentality." Van Gogh responded more intensely, both spiritually and artistically, admiring how "in a Millet painting everything is at once reality and a symbol – and symbolism is the language of religion."
Millet's later works became increasingly elemental and mysterious. "The Faggot Gatherers" (1868-75) shows a procession of women stumbling forward under enormous loads, their bodies seemingly fused with their bundles of sticks. "The Well at Gruchy" depicts an old woman rinsing copper pails in front of a half-lit cottage, giving Millet's work a fairytale aura that evokes rural tradition while heralding the emotive charge of fin de siècle mysticism and expressionism.
For Van Gogh, it was Millet, not Édouard Manet, who was "the essentially modern painter who has opened horizons." Van Gogh's versions of "The Sower," featuring figures haloed by vast suns symbolizing "yearning for the infinite," traced back to Millet's own inspiration in Pieter Bruegel's biblical painting "Parable of the Sower." Since Millet's death in 1875, his work has continued to influence symbolists, socialists, and surrealists. Chinese revolutionaries in the 1930s adopted "The Sower" as their icon, while Salvador Dalí claimed "L'Angelus" was "the picture richest in unconscious thoughts that had ever existed," offering bizarre Freudian readings and creating his own sinister version.
Millet himself resisted political, religious, or artistic labels throughout his career. When writer Edward Wheelwright visited him and found "The Pig Killers" on his easel, the artist's wife noted its extreme pathos. Millet simply replied, "Mais Madame, c'est un drame" (But Madame, it is a drama). His appeal lies both in his sympathy with the downtrodden and his theatrical pictorial construction, creating works that continue to resonate with audiences today. The exhibition runs through October 19 at the National Gallery.
