Jean-François Millet

"My dear Sensier, - I shall be greatly obliged if after reading and sealing the enclosed letter, you will take it to Rue du Delta, No. 8. [Paris].. ..Jaque [common friend and painter] and I have settled to stay here [ Barbizon ] for some time, and have accordingly each of us taken rooms. The prices are excessively low compared to those in Paris; and as it is easy to get to town if necessary, and the country is superbly beautiful, we hope to work more quietly here, and perhaps do better things. In fact, we intend to spend some time here.. .I wish you good-bye, with many hearty embraces. Jacque sends you warm remembrances, and will answer your letter tomorrow."

"What do I care? I dont come here [studying with the Paris artist & teacher Paul Delaroche to please anybody. I come because there are antiques and models to teach me, that is all. Do I object to your figures, made of butter and honey [to Alfred Boisseau?"

"[[w:Théophile Gautier|[Theophile] Gautiers]] article is very good. I begin to feel a little more contented. His remarks about my thick colours are also very just. The critics who see and judge my pictures are not forced to know that in painting them I am not guided by a definite intention, although I do my utmost to try and attain the aim which I have in sight, independently of methods. People are not even obliged to know why it is that I work in this way, with all its faults."

"My dear Rousseau, I do not know if the two sketches which I enclose will be of any use to you. I merely wish to show you where I would place the figures in your picture, that is all. You know better than I do what is best, and what you wish to do. These last few days we have had some effects of hoarfrost, which I am not going to try and describe, feeling how useless this would be! I will content myself with saying that God alone can ever have seen such marvelously fairy-like scenes. I only wish that you could have been here to see them. Have you finished your pictures? Because you have only a month more in which to finish your Forest, and it is very important indeed that this picture should be in the Salon. In fact, it must absolutely be there.. .Good-bye, my dear Rousseau, and accept a whole pile of cordial good wishes."

"The schooling of [the young] Millet, begun by the good vicar Jean Lebrisseux.. ..He was soon obliged to be a serious help to his father, and to devote all his time to the rough farm-work. He was the eldest of the sons, and in this lay a duty which Francois accepted without regret. He began to work beside his father and the hands, to mow, make hay, bind the sheaves, thresh, winnow, spread manure, plow, sow, - in a word, all the work which makes the daily life of the peasant. So he spent years...[ till Millet was c. 18 years old]"

"At last, here is a new man [Millet], who has the knowledge which I would like to have, and movement, color, expression, too, - here is a painter!"

"[Millet,] an entirely original painter, high-minded and genuinely rustic in nature, who has expressed things about the country and its inhabitants, about their toil, their melancholy, and the nobleness of their labour. He has represented them in a somewhat barbaric fashion, in a manner to which his ideas gave a more expressive force than his hand possessed. The world has been grateful for his intentions; it has recognised in his methods something of the sensibility of a Burns who was a little awkward in expression.. .He stands out as a deep thinker."

"The great Millet indignantly protests [Le Figaro has just published two letters of Millet] against the Commune [and the communards] , whom he characterizes as barbarians and vandals; he concludes with a dig at good Courbet, who, as I see it, can only be aggrandized by this attempt at belittlement. Because of his painting The Man with the Hoe, the socialists thought Millet was on their side.. .Not at all. More and more indignant disavowals from the great painter! What do you think of that? I was not much surprised. He was just a bit too biblical."

"For the first [his very first time in Paris], I went to a little hotel, where I spent the night in a sort of nightmare, in which I saw my home, full of melancholy, with my mother, grandmother, and sister spinning in the evening, weeping and thinking of me, praying that I should escape the perdition of Paris. Then the evil demon drove me on before wonderful pictures, which seemed so beautiful, so brilliant, that it appeared to me they took fire and vanished in a heavenly cloud.. .Finally, without knowing how, I found myself [during one of his his first days in Paris] on the Pont Neuf, from which I saw a magnificent building which I thought must be the Louvre, from the descriptions I had heard of it. I went to it, and mounted the great stairway with a beating heart. At last one great object of my life was attained. I had imagined correctly what I should see. It seemed to me that I was in a world of friends [the paintings of the old masters], in a family where all that I beheld was the reality of my dreams."

"Sir, I have completed the picture [Les Faneurs / Haymakers, 1849] which you were kind enough to order, and have executed it with all possible care and conscientiousness. I ought to send it to the Exhibition, where it could be properly seen and judged. I pray you to be good enough to pay me the balance of 1,100 francs which is still due on this commission. My great need of money obliges me to ask you to let me have it as soon as possible. Accept, sir, the assurance of my pro- found respect - J. F. Millet. 8, Rue du Delta [Paris]"

"He [Alfred de Musset] puts you into a fever, it is true; but he can do nothing more for you. He has undoubted charms, but his taste is capricious and poisoned. All he can do is to disenchant and corrupt you, and at the end leave you in despair. The fever passes, and you are left without strength - like a convalescent who is in need of fresh air, of the sunshine, and of the stars."

"I work like a gang of slaves; the day seems five months long. My wish to make a winter landscape has become a fixed idea. I want to do a sheep picture and have all sorts of projects in my head. If you could see how beautiful the forest is! I rush there at the end of the day, after my work, and I come back every time crushed. It is so calm, such a terrible grandeur, that I find myself really frightened. I dont know what those fellows, the trees, are saying to each other.. ..we dont know their language, that is all; but I am quite sure of this - they do not make puns!.. ..Send [me] 3 burnt sienna, 2 raw ditto, 3 Napless yellow, 1 burnt Italian earth, 2 yellow ocher, 2 burnt umber, 1 bottle of raw oil."