Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) was the most prominent French realist painter of the 19th century known for his peasant themes, the French Barbizonist painter, and was famous for his rural genre paintings. People used to call him Miller, and the actual pronunciation in French should be translated as "rice leaf".
Jean-François Miller, Self-Portrait
Just as landscape painters such as Rousseau and Corot discovered the poetry of ordinary nature, Miller also discovered the poetry of ordinary laborers. However, the farmers he wrote were not Adam and Eve in heaven, they were tired, poor, all-day laborers, dressed in sills, dark skin, stooped bodies, thick palms, this is Miller's aesthetic, this is the image of the French peasant whom Miller praises and praises with all his heart. "They work day after day to nurture this great nation, and they work day after day to create this beautiful country."
Vespers
Jean François Miller, 1857, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In "Vespers", there stand a man and a woman and two farmers, a middle-aged couple, who have worked all day, and all the harvest is on that small cart. By this time the church bells had sounded far away, all the labor in their hands had stopped, and the couple was immersed in prayer. From their posture, they can appreciate their humility to life and destiny, and they will always grit their teeth and bear the burden of life silently, which is the essence of hard work and kindness.
Work
Jean François Miller
Sow potatoes
Gleaners
Seeder
Every summer, after the wheat is harvested, the farmer will definitely leave some seeds behind and store them. Wait for the cold winter to pass, reopen the farmland, and then start sowing. A man is depicted carrying a cloth pocket full of seeds. He strode out on the earth, and with his right hand he threw out the seeds one by one, and it was the season when life began again.
Step 1
The picture is still a piece of rural farmland, and on the back is a peasant's house. On the right of the painting, a peasant woman helps her little daughter to help her toddler. The peasant father of the baby girl on the left crouched on the ground and opened his hands to encourage her to move forward. Miller's works, the rustic atmosphere of country labor comes to the face, the main body of the picture is solid, the background is very breathable, and you can vaguely feel the warmth of the sun and the fragrance of the earth.
Cliffs Coast in Grievier
Jean François Miller, pastel on paper, 43.7 × 54 cm, 1848
The original is in the Ohara Museum of Art, Japan
In this painting, the close-up plants are layered and the perspective relationship is clear and unambiguous. The distant rays of the sunset heralded the end of the day's labor, and the laborers lay on the hills to rest. The contours of the picture are delicate, the brushstrokes are clear, and the real is simple.
Miller's last work before his death was a group of landscapes. There are four landscapes in this group, and he paints four different seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, but before his death, the only work that was really completed was spring.
Orchard with rainbow (spring)
Jean François Miller, oil on canvas, 86 x 111 cm, 1868
The original is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris
On the screen, the spring rain has just fallen, and a rainbow appears in the sky. The apple trees in the countryside bloom very beautiful flowers, and you can feel the humid moisture in the air. Every grass on the ground, every leaf on the tree, seemed to tremble in the spring rain, feeling the joy of spring coming. The whole work symbolizes the bloom of flowers and the revival of all things, like a stage that has broken through the ground and is thriving.
Orchard with rainbow (one of the paintings)
Jean François Miller, pastel on paper, 42 × 54 cm, 1872-73
The original is in the Collection of the Gulbenkian Museum of Art
Miller's depictions of nature with delicate brushstrokes are still beloved today.
Romain Rolland once said in his biography of Miller: "Miller, the classical master who instilled all his spirit in eternal meaning more than the moment, has never been a painter who has given such a majestic and great feeling and expression to the earth to which all things belong." ”