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Shepherdess Knitting. {Etching) 
 
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 THE etchings of Jean-Francois Millet (count- 
 ing each state of each plate separately) are 
 forty-four in number. They range from tiny 
 first essays, roughly scratched on copper and 
 printed by the artist himself with color from 
 his palette, to large accomplished etchings, beau- 
 tifully printed by professional hands. These 
 last show in many cases designs with which 
 some of Millet's most famous paintings have 
 made us familiar. Here in black and white we 
 find again, for instance, the "Gleaners," the 
 "Wool-Carder," the "Peasant with Wheel- 
 barrow," the thrice-popular " Two Peasants 
 Going to Work," and the "Two Men Dig- 
 ging." But, even so, there is no question of 
 "reproductive" art. In etching a subject 
 which he had previously painted Millet did not 
 try to reproduce the painting; he merely tried 
 to give fresh expression, with a different artis- 
 tic method, to a conception already once ex- 
 
 5 
 
pressed with paint. Each etching stands on its 
 own merit as an etching, as frankly and simply 
 as though no painting of the same subject were 
 in existence. 
 
 Millet's truly artistic nature shows in the fact 
 that he went thus about his work. And the 
 breadth and versatility of that nature is con- 
 vincingly proved by the intrinsic excellence ot 
 these etchings in conjunction with the intrinsic 
 excellence of the corresponding pictures. A 
 man who had given his whole life to etching 
 only, who had never thought of painting, and 
 had never cared for those effects proper to paint- 
 ing and not to etching, could not have been 
 more truly and markedly a born etcher than 
 Millet showed himself to be — few though were 
 the plates and many though were the canvases 
 he worked upon. To depend upon lines, not 
 tones, for expression ; to make every line "tell," 
 and to use no more lines than are absolutely 
 needed to tell exactly what he wants to say; to 
 speak strongly, concisely, and to the point ; to 
 tell us much while saying little ; to suggest 
 rather than to elaborate, but to suggest in such 
 a way that the meaning shall be very clear and 
 individual and impressive — these are the things 
 the true etcher tries to do. And these are the 
 things that Millet did with a more magnificent 
 6 
 
Peasants Going to Work. (Etching) 
 
Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2014 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/jeanfrancoismillOOvanr 
 
power than any man, perhaps, since Rembrandt. 
 Other modern etchings have more charm than 
 his — none have quite so much feeling. Others 
 show more grace and delicacy of touch — none 
 show more force or certainty, and none a more 
 artistic <( economy of means." Compare one of 
 these prints with the corresponding picture, and 
 you will feel, more deeply than ever before, 
 how much more important was the intellectual 
 than the technical side of Millet's art. Its 
 technique is always admirable, whatever may 
 be the process chosen ; if it were not, the in- 
 tellectual message would not be told so clearly. 
 But it is never the sort of technique one cares 
 much about for its own sake ; certainly never 
 the sort that another man, with a different mes- 
 sage to deliver, could wisely try to imitate. It 
 is a means, in short, and not an end ; and a 
 means which gets its interest from its peculiar 
 fitness to help the artist toward his true end, 
 the expression of his thought and feeling. Even 
 the color that is so beautiful in Millet's best 
 paintings is not, we find, really necessary to 
 express his inmost power. In looking at these 
 etchings we hardly remember the delightful 
 golden tones of the painted " Gleaners," the 
 misty springtime atmosphere of the " Going to 
 Work," or the rich and tender scheme of the 
 9 
 
f* Wool-Carder.' ' The essence of the painter's 
 feeling is here, in these few strokes of black on 
 white ; and the essence of his feeling is more 
 valuable than even the splendid glow of color 
 by means of which he enhanced, on canvas, its 
 effect. Had he not been possessed of a deep, 
 genuine, and contagious sort of feeling — pos- 
 sessed of it above all other modern men — so 
 simple a kind of expression as these etchings 
 show, would have had little to attract the ob- 
 server. But had the expression been simple 
 merely, and not wise as well, had its very sim- 
 plicity not been the last word of artistic power, 
 intelligence, and subtility, it would never have 
 conveyed so intense and clear a feeling as now 
 it bids us read. Only a great artist could have 
 felt as Millet did ; only a great etcher could 
 have expressed his feeling with the needle as 
 he did. 
 
 It is interesting, too, to note, that with all 
 the difference that exists between one of these 
 etchings and the corresponding paintings, there 
 is in each case great similarity also. The dif- 
 ference is in method — the similarity in con- 
 ception. A born painter has been defined as 
 one whose visions of things imagined are as 
 clear and vivid as his sight of things perceived. 
 We can all imagine scenes and figures, but 
 10 
 
The Woman Carding Wool {Etching) 
 
only the born artist can imagine them so dis- 
 tinctly that he is impelled to reproduce them, 
 and is able to reproduce them so exactly that 
 we then see them just as he had seen them — 
 with their spiritual suggestiveness as well as their 
 outward form. Certainly such words are true of 
 Millet's visions. Certainly no artist's concep- 
 tions can ever have been clearer, more of the 
 nature of inspirations which come from some 
 undecipherable source and cannot be altered 
 even at the will of the mind that has received 
 them. For even when the method of expres- 
 sion, or, so to say, of translation is changed, 
 the essential characteristics of the conception 
 remain the same. Unlike as are the two figures 
 in execution, the face and attitude and expres- 
 sion and general sentiment of the etched 
 << Wool-Carder," for instance, are almost 
 phenomenally the same as those of the painted 
 "Wool-Carder." The effect of the picture 
 is very different from the effect of the etching; 
 but the meaning, the feeling, the spiritual qual- 
 ity, is exactly the same in the one and in the 
 other. 
 
 The woodcuts engraved by Millet himsel 
 are but a few bold and crude essays; apparently, 
 he soon gave up the attempt to work in this 
 way. But certain designs which he drew upon 
 
 13 
 
wood were cut by his two brothers, and among 
 these there are some things of marvelous force 
 and beauty. No more striking contrast could 
 be imagined than that which would exist were 
 one of these cuts — say, for instance, the large 
 6 ' Shepherdess " — placed side by side with 
 one of the best of recent American woodcuts. 
 No comparison would more clearly show the 
 vast range of the art — the different kinds of 
 excellence which can be obtained by its appar- 
 ently simple methods. These Millet cuts are 
 of the school of the sixteenth, not of the nine- 
 teenth, century — very simple, very bold, 
 almost rude in execution ; done with a few 
 strong black lines relieved on broad fields of 
 plain paper. So simple are they that one is 
 tempted to believe they were done with the 
 old-time knife and not the new-time burin; 
 and so splendidly strong and "telling" that 
 one can hardly believe it was a modern French 
 and not an ancient German hand which drew 
 and cut them. A series of woodcuts engraved 
 from Millet's drawings by other hands is far 
 less interesting. We feel how intimate must 
 have been the artistic sympathy of his brothers 
 with himself when we see how much of the 
 character of his designs is lost when translated 
 by a stranger's touch. 
 
 14 
 
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 Jean-Francois Millet was born in the little 
 village of Gruchy, on the Norman coast, on 
 the 4th of October, 18 14. There for genera- 
 tions his family had cultivated their small piece 
 of ground, and there the future artist was 
 brought up in the laborious thrift of the poorer 
 French peasantry. 
 
 As his mother could not be spared from her 
 daily labor in the fields, the care of the child 
 fell to the grandmother. Of this devout and 
 excellent woman Millet always cherished the 
 most affectionate remembrance, and to her train- 
 ing he was chiefly indebted for those strong 
 principles of right and morality which he always 
 maintained. 
 
 In the intervals of his labor in the fields, 
 the boy received some instruction from the 
 Cure of Greville. This worthy man encour- 
 
 17 
 
aged him to study Latin, telling him that through 
 it he could become a doctor or a priest. Millet 
 did learn Latin, but declared that he would be 
 neither priest nor doctor, but would help his 
 father on the farm. 
 
 The elder Millet appears to have been an 
 enlightened man. From the first he encour- 
 aged his son's propensity to make sketches of 
 the scenes and persons about him ; and when, at 
 the age of eighteen, Millet proposed to adopt the 
 career of an artist, the father replied : " My poor 
 Francois, I cannot well spare you while your 
 brothers are so young ; but we will go together 
 to Cherbourg and show some of your drawings 
 to an artist there, and if he considers that you 
 have real talent, I will consent." 
 
 At Cherbourg they showed two drawings to 
 Mouchel, who was a pupil of the school of 
 David. This artist at first refused to believe 
 that the drawings which were shown him could 
 be the unaided work of a peasant-boy ; and when 
 at last convinced that they were, he declared 
 that the boy had in him the making of a great 
 artist. 
 
 Millet then commenced his art studies at 
 Cherbourg, and while there he also read with 
 avidity all the books he could procure. Be- 
 sides the French authors, he was passionately 
 18 
 
fond of Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Goethe, and 
 Fenimore Cooper. He removed to Paris at 
 the age of twenty-three, and although he was 
 then a simple peasant, he was far from being 
 an ignorant one. His letters show that Millet 
 was a man of intellect and refinement, and in 
 after life it was his habit to read his Bible and 
 his Virgil in the Latin. 
 
 The artist has left a record of his first expe- 
 riences in the great city. His main desire was 
 to visit the pictures in the Louvre, but he was 
 too shy to inquire his way, and wandered about 
 until he came upon the building by chance. 
 
 He was chiefly impressed by the works of 
 Mantegna, Michael Angelo, and Nicolas Pous- 
 sin ; but the artificial prettiness ot Watteau and 
 Boucher gave him no pleasure, and he had a 
 feeling that the performing puppets in their 
 pictures should be shut up in a box after their 
 masquerade was over. 
 
 He became a pupil of Paul Delaroche, but 
 could never adopt the academic formality of 
 that popular painter. 
 
 Although his resources in Paris were very 
 slender, Millet contrived to make several visits 
 to the beloved homestead in Normandy. Dur- 
 ing one of these visits in 1841, he painted sev- 
 eral portraits (some sign-boards also), and among 
 21 
 
these portraits that of the young girl of Cher- 
 bourg whom he married. 
 
 Millet was then a large, strong, handsome 
 young man of twenty-seven. His first wife 
 died within three years, and in 1845 he mar- 
 ried the woman who became the mother of his 
 large family, and who remained — until his 
 death, thirty years afterward — his devoted 
 companion in his few joys and many sorrows. 
 
 Thus far fortune had, in a moderate way, 
 smiled on the artist, but now his troubles began 
 to come thick and fast ; and they only ended 
 with his life. Returning to Paris in 1845, 
 Millet and his wife endured years of dire pri- 
 vation. In the winter of 1848 a friend found 
 them in a room without fire, and learned that 
 for two days they had had nothing to eat. Sev- 
 eral pictures were refused admission at the Sa- 
 lon, and those that were admitted found few 
 admirers and few purchasers. It was the oft- 
 repeated tale of so many men of great original 
 genius (those innovators and prophets whose 
 tombs are devoutly built by posterity) : first, 
 total neglect ; next, encountering opposition and 
 detraction ; after that, occasioning violent con- 
 troversies ; still later, seriously considered ; and 
 finally taking their place among the immortals. 
 When at last renown came to Millet, it came 
 22 
 
too late. The strong, vigorous man was worn 
 out by long years of neglect, poverty, and dis- 
 appointment ; no strength remained to gather 
 the harvest — and so he died. 
 
 Surely commonplace mediocrity leads a hap- 
 pier life than inspired genius! And may there 
 not be among us some unknown Millets living 
 and suffering to-day ? 
 
 Millet never took kindly to Paris. The ar- 
 tificial glare and glitter were repugnant to his 
 simple, serious nature, and he was fain to es- 
 cape in 1 849 to the little village of Barbison, 
 on the skirts of the forest of Fontainebleau. 
 Here he rented the cottage where he lived for 
 twenty-seven years, and where he died on the 
 20th of January, 1875, in the sixty-first year 
 of his age. 
 
 After the master's death his widow and chil- 
 dren continued to occupy the now famous little 
 cottage at Barbison, and in 1886 some of his 
 admirers purchased this cottage and made 
 Madame Millet its owner. It was there that 
 she resided to the end of her life. 
 
 Millet's development in art was steady and 
 gradual. It was only after he had definitely 
 devoted himself at Barbison to the delineation 
 of peasant life, that his masterpieces in painting 
 and etching were produced. 
 
 2 5 
 
Although he was wretchedly poor during 
 this period, yet a few of his contemporaries 
 recognized him even then as a great artist. 
 Among those were Theodore Rousseau, Charles 
 Jacque, and the American painter William 
 Hunt. 
 
 It is well known that Alfred Sensier rilled a 
 role, with regard to Millet, not unlike that 
 which was rilled by James Boswell a hundred 
 years before with sturdy old Dr. Samuel John- 
 son. Sensier, as well as Boswell, recognized 
 the greatness of his hero, and sought his society 
 on all occasions ; and each has left an admirable 
 biography of the man of his admiration. No 
 one could read Sensier' s Life of Millet without 
 being filled with esteem as well as pity for the 
 true-hearted man it portrays. 
 
 In etching, as in painting, Millet was thor- 
 oughly original and entirely himself. A con- 
 summate draughtsman, he despised all tricks of 
 mere prettiness and " finish," and having given 
 the essentials of a composition, he wisely stopped 
 and carried it no farther. 
 
 There is little that is distinctively French in 
 his work; no coquetry, no superficial adroit- 
 ness or vivacity ; but in their place are direct 
 and serious honesty combined with transcen- 
 dent ability. Some extracts from his letters to 
 26 
 
Woman Sewing. {Etching) 
 
an intimate friend will show how this poet of 
 the poor saw his vocation: "To paint well 
 and naturally, I think an artist should avoid the 
 theatre.' ' "The human side of art is what 
 touches me most ; the gay side never shows 
 itself to me." And of the weary and hopeless 
 toil of the poor, he writes : "To me this is true 
 humanity and great poetry." 
 
 Millet's etched work was produced at a time 
 when the art had not as yet become popular, 
 and hence some of his finest plates have become 
 very scarce ; indeed, several prints, or states of 
 prints, are unique. 
 
 His paintings being so well known, either 
 through the originals themselves or through 
 etchings (done by other hands) and by photo- 
 graphs taken from them, our present concern is 
 with the original etchings which the master 
 executed with his own hand. Of these there 
 exist only twenty-one plates, and they include 
 some eight which are mere studies made by 
 Millet of the etching process, so that his fin- 
 ished etched plates number only thirteen. 
 
 Nearly every one of these thirteen etchings 
 is of special interest because it is the original 
 finished study which the master afterwards 
 elaborated into some famous painting. There 
 is a saying among the French artists to the 
 29 
 
effect that a man paints every day, no matter 
 how he feels; but that when he etches it is 
 only on his good days ; and the distinguished 
 American artist Thomas Moran once said, 
 when looking over some etchings by Millet, 
 " I like his etchings even better than his paint- 
 ings ; when he was painting he was mainly 
 thinking of his color, but when he was etching 
 he had nothing to think of but his drawing." 
 
 Of Millet's thirteen finished etchings the 
 first place is generally accorded to his plate of 
 the u Woman Carding Wool." We may 
 allow this to be " the chief among equals"; 
 these equals being the "Two Men Digging," 
 the "Women Gleaning," the "Man with a 
 Wheelbarrow," the "Woman Churning," the 
 "Shepherdess Knitting" and the "Peasants 
 Going to Work." 
 
 There is perhaps no other great etcher whose 
 works gain or lose so much according to the 
 good or the bad quality of each individual proof. 
 Millet was not himself an expert printer ; and 
 judging by the very poor quality of some proofs 
 which were unquestionably printed for himself, 
 he did not always seem to know whether a 
 proof was good, middling or bad. Probably 
 the true explanation is that Millet could seldom 
 afford Jio pay for the services of an expert 
 30 
 
The Man Leaning on his Spade. [Etching) 
 
printer, and an incompetent one is likely to 
 ruin the effect of the finest plate in the world ; 
 for a badly printed proof is no better than a 
 libel on the artist. If one man pays five times 
 more for a suit of clothes then another man can 
 pay, the former is very apt to be the better 
 dressed of the two. The dull, heavy and life- 
 less impressions of Millet's plates which some- 
 times shock the connoisseur do not exist 
 through any fault in the plates themselves; for 
 when the plates were printed by such a master 
 craftsman as Auguste Delatre the result is har- 
 monious, luminous and altogether beautiful. 
 He generally printed Millet's proofs on thin 
 old Japanese paper of a golden tone, or else on 
 fine old Dutch paper. These latter, equally 
 fine, but different in effect, were often printed 
 with a brownish ink. Delatre was by no 
 means the only expert printer who understood 
 how to get out of Millet's plates all that the 
 master had put into them, and this fact makes 
 it the more astonishing that Millet could have 
 tolerated a considerable number of bad im- 
 pressions. 
 
 It is, then, through fine proofs only that 
 Millet's etchings should be judged. Such seem 
 to have already taken rank among the permanent 
 masterpieces of the art — beginning with the 
 
 33 
 
works of Diirer and Rembrandt and coming down 
 to the etchings of Seymour Haden and Whistler. 
 
 Besides his etchings and lithographs, Millet 
 also tried his hand at wood-engraving, and with 
 eminent success. He had the intelligence to 
 see that the laborious and over-elaborate wood- 
 cuts of his day were no more than feeble imi- 
 tations of engravings on copper or steel, and so 
 he brought wood-engraving back to the sim- 
 plicity which had been so triumphantly prac- 
 tised by Albert Diirer three centuries before. 
 Diirer' s engravings on copper still remain models 
 of minute elaboration, but when he made a 
 woodcut he changed his method entirely. The 
 effect in his woodcuts is mainly achieved through 
 the bold and even coarse outlines. Millet has 
 done the same — and with admirable results. 
 He seldom actually engraved the wood blocks 
 upon which he had drawn designs (any more 
 than Diirer did), but, having made some studies 
 in the art, he had his designs engraved by one 
 of his two brothers, Pierre or Jean-Baptiste. 
 The large woodcut of the 6 < Shepherdess Seated, ' ' 
 engraved byJ.-B. Millet, and the "Digger 
 leaning on his Spade 99 and the " Woman fill- 
 ing Water Cans," engraved by Pierre Millet, 
 are equally full of the spirit of their great 
 brother. 
 
 34 
 
A Woman Churning. (Etching) 
 
Fashions in art will change. Some living 
 artists who have acquired great fame have 
 perhaps already <( outlived their immortality," 
 while others, to-day unheralded, will some 
 day be famous. But in the roll of honor of 
 the nineteenth century there is no name more 
 certain to go down to posterity as that of a 
 master in art than the name of Jean-Francois 
 Millet. 
 
 Note: // may interest admirers of the mas- 
 ter^ s etchings to know that 9 with the consent of 
 the Millet family, all of his etched plates have 
 been destroyed, so as to avoid tbe possibility of 
 printing any more proofs from them. 
 
 37 
 
The Shepherdess. 
 
 (Woodcut) 
 
Oiiginal St eking 'd by 
 
 The following original etchings by J.-F. Millet can (at 
 present) be supplied by Messrs. Frederick Keppel & Co., 
 20 East 1 6th Street, New York : 
 
 A Woman Hanging out Clothes. 
 Peasant Resting. 
 
 The Man Leaning on his Spade. 
 The Two Cows. 
 
 A Peasant Seated (a very small plate). 
 
 Various Sketches on one plate. 
 
 The Sea- Weed Gatherers. 
 
 A Woman Sewing. 
 
 A Woman Churning. 
 
 Peasant with a Wheelbarrow. 
 
 The Gleaners. 
 
 Two Men Digging. 
 
 The Watchers. 
 
 The Wool-Carder. 
 
 The Woman Feeding her Child. 
 
 The Shepherdess Knitting. 
 
 Peasants Going to Work. 
 
 The Spinner. 
 
 41 
 
Peasant Digging. 
 
 Engraved by J.-F. Millet. 
 
 Sketches. 
 
 Engraved by J.-F. Millet. 
 Woman Filling Water-Cans. 
 
 Engraved by Pierre Millet. 
 
 The Shepherdess. 
 
 Engraved by J.-Baptiste Millet. 
 Digger Leaning on his Spade. 
 
 Engraved by Pierre Millet. 
 
 The Sower. 
 
 By J.-F. Millet. 
 
 4* 
 
The Sower. (Lithograph}