Millet, JEAN FRANÇOIS, painter, was born in the village of Gruchy, near Gréville, on the 4th of October 1814. The son of a farmer, he owed much in his childhood to his grandmother, a woman of great piety and individuality, and to her brother, who had been a priest; and he was taught enough Latin to enjoy the Vulgate and Virgil. For a time he aided his father as a farm-labourer; but, having manifested great taste for drawing, he was at length, in 1832, placed under Monchel, a painter in Cherbourg, whom he assisted in the execution of two sacred subjects now in the church of the Trinity there, and who induced the municipality of Cherbourg to grant an annuity to aid his pupil in his studies, the sum being afterwards supplemented by the council of La Manche. In 1837 Millet came to Paris, and worked in the studio of Paul Delaroche, learning, however, more from his study of the works of Michael Angelo, Poussin, Correggio, and the Venetians. Next he painted and drew in pastels little subjects in the popular style of Boucher and Watteau, selling them to the dealers for a few francs; and in 1840 a portrait which he sent to the salon was accepted and hung. In the same year he returned to Normandy, where he painted portraits and even signboards. In 1841 he was again in Paris; and he struggled hard amid the revolutionary troubles that followed to maintain himself and his family by his art. In 1848 he fought at the barricades of the Quartier Roche-chouart; and in the following year he settled in Barbizon, near the Forest of Fontainebleau, along with Charles Jacque, and there made the acquaintance of Theodore Rousseau. At Barbizon, where he remained for the rest of his days, living much like the peasants around him, he began in good earnest to paint the life of rustic France, entering on his task with a sympathetic power such as no other painter has shown. Here the famous 'Sower' was completed in 1850, mainly, however, from recollections of Normandy. In 1855 his 'Peasants Grafting' won Gautier's praise, and was bought by an American for 4000 francs. It was followed by 'The Gleaners' in 1857, 'The Angelus' (1859), 'Waiting' and 'The Sheep-shearers' (1861), 'The Man with the Hoe' and 'Women Carding' (1863), 'Shepherdess and Flock' (1864), works in which, without any departure from the most absolute truth, he imparted a largeness and a pathetic dignity to his figures of the men and women who labour in the fields, and to their environments of ordinary nature. In addition to paintings, he produced many charcoal drawings of a very high quality, and he etched a few plates. All his life long he struggled against the pressure of poverty, though he was awarded medals at the salons of 1853 and 1864, and a first-class medal at the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, when he also received the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He died at Barbizon, 20th January 1875. Since his death he has been fully recognised as one of the greatest of French painters; and the productions of his brush have realised very large prices. At the Secrétan sale in Paris, in 1889, his most celebrated picture, 'The Angelus,' sold—along with the government commission of 5 per cent.—for £23,226; it was afterwards exhibited for a year in the United States.
See works on Millet by Piedagnel (1876), Sensier (Eng. trans. 1881), Yriarte (1884), Ménard (1890), Roger-Milès (1895); D. C. Thomson, The Barbizon School (1890); and his Life and Letters by Julia Cartwright (1896).