The first UK exhibition in nearly 50 years dedicated to Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) will open at the National Gallery in autumn 2025.
The show will coincide with the 150th anniversary of Millet’s death – by which time his works were well known in the UK and beginning to be eagerly collected by an enthusiastic group of British collectors, resulting in a significant body of his work in UK public collections.
Millet: Life on the Land will present around 13 paintings and drawings from British public collections. It will include the National Gallery’s The Winnower (about 1847‒8), and the exceptional loan of 'L’Angelus' (1857‒9) from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
The exhibition will range from Millet’s last years in Paris through to his images of workers on the land during the 1850s following his move to the village of Barbizon in the Fontainebleau Forest in 1849, when he became one of the most significant painters associated with the 19th-century Barbizon school*. Two drawings of shepherdesses from the Cooper Gallery (Barnsley) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge) will be shown together for the first time.
'The Winnower', which was acquired by the National Gallery in 1978, is one of Millet’s first paintings to treat the theme of rural labour. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1848 and was well received. However, later works exhibited at the Paris Salon produced extreme reaction. While Millet’s own political convictions are unclear, many critics appropriated his work for their own progressive agenda while others labelled him as subversive. Yet there is no doubt that he had sympathy with the workers around him and wrote in 1851 of the ‘human side’ that touched him most.
In 'L’Angelus', a man and a woman are reciting the Angelus, a prayer which commemorates the annunciation made to Mary by the angel Gabriel. It is traditionally cited at morning, noon and evening, when it marks the end of the working day. Never collected by its original commissioner, it followed an extraordinary journey through several collections and sales. The two quiet figures silhouetted against land and sky, the profound sense of meditation underscored by a beauty of light have turned it into a world-famous icon in the 20th century.
Sarah Herring, Associate Curator of Post 1800 Paintings, says ‘Millet endowed rural labourers with dignity and nobility, depicting them in drawings and paintings with empathy and compassion.’
Images
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Jean-François Millet (1814–1875)
Millet was born at Grouchy (Manche) and was a pupil of Paul Delaroche in Paris by 1837. For some years he painted chiefly idylls in imitation of 18th-century French painters. Becoming, like Honoré Daumier, increasingly moved by the spectacle of social injustice, Millet turned to peasant subjects and won his first popular success at the Salon of 1848 with The Winnower. From the following year he was chiefly active at Barbizon and associated with the Barbizon school of landscape painters.
His work was influenced by Dutch paintings of the 17th century and by the work of Jean-Siméon Chardin and was influential in Holland on Jozef Israëls and on the early style of Vincent Van Gogh.
*Barbizon school
The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement toward Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name from the village of Barbizon, France, on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where many of the artists gathered. Most of their works were landscape painting, but several of them also painted landscapes with farmworkers, and genre scenes of village life. Some of the most prominent features of this school are its tonal qualities, colour, loose brushwork, and softness of form.
The leaders of the Barbizon school were: Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, Jules Dupré, Constant Troyon, Charles Jacque, and Narcisse Virgilio Díaz. Jean-François Millet lived in Barbizon from 1849, but his interest in figures with a landscape backdrop sets him rather apart from the others.
Images
Jean-François Millet
The Winnower
about 1847-8
Oil on canvas
100.5 × 71 cm
© The National Gallery, London
Jean-François Millet
'L’Angélus', 1857–9
Oil on canvas
55.5 x 66 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris (RF 1877)
© Musée d'Orsay, Dist. Grand Palais Rmn / Patrice Schmidt
Jean-François Millet
Wood Choppers, about 1850
Black chalk and watercolour on paper
46.9 x 30.8 cm
National Gallery of Scotland (D NG 1237)
Purchased 1919
© National Galleries of Scotland
Jean-François Millet
A Milkmaid, about 1853
Oil on canvas
32.5 x 24 cm
© The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham (77.1)
Jean-François Millet
A Shepherdess, about 1856
Black chalk with touches of blue chalk on pale buff paper
22.8 x 15.1 cm
National Gallery of Scotland
Mr A.E. Anderson Gift 1929 (D3729)
© National Galleries of Scotland
Jean-François Millet
The Faggot Gatherers, about 1850-5
Oil on panel
30.4 18 cm
National Gallery of Scotland
Accepted in lieu of Estate Duty by HM Government from the Craigmyle Collection, and allocated to the National Galleries of Scotland, 2020 (NG 2887)
© National Galleries of Scotland
