The Barbizon school was a studio school. It walked the streets and the fields; it looked at men and women at work and at play, but when it came to paint it did not paint outdoors with object and easel in close contact; it retired within its doors and transformed life and nature as great romantic story-tellers translate their impressions into fairy-tales and romances. * * * * * It seems a far cry from Millet to Chabaud but in some aspects of their attitude toward art they are nearly akin. Between the two there intervened Impressionism, that is all. Millet painted _labor_. And what is the painting by Chabaud, “The Laborer,” but a more elemental Millet? It lacks the romantic, the poetic qualities of Millet’s “Labor,” for instance, or his “Sower”--paintings famous in prints and reproductions, but it is none the less a vivid representation of labor. To the admirers of Millet it may seem sacrilegious to even mention Chabaud in comparison, but, confining our attention to the one painting reproduced herein, there is no question that in its elemental strength, its simplicity, it possesses a quality, a certain bald dramatic quality that Millet lacks, though Millet’s “Sower” may possess qualities you like more. However it is with no intention to make a comparison between two men so very different, that I mention them, but rather for the purpose of pointing out that the attitude of both to their art is fundamentally the same--they use art to _express themselves_ and not to imitate what they see. This is the way Millet worked. “He himself went about Barbizon like a peasant. And he might have been seen wandering over the woods and fields with an old, red cloak, wooden shoes, and a weather-beaten straw hat. He rose at sunrise, and wandered about the country as his parents had done. He guarded no flocks, drove no cows, and no yokes of oxen or horses; he carried neither mattock nor spade but rested on his stick; he was equipped with only the _faculty_ of _observation_ and _poetic intention_ ... he leant on the garden wall with his arms crossed on his breast, and looked into the setting sun as it threw a rosy veil over field and forest. He heard the chime of vesper bells, watched the people pray and then return home. And he returned also, and read the Bible by lamplight, while his wife sewed and the children slept. When all was quiet he closed the book and began _to dream_.... _On the morrow he painted._”[7] This is the method of all the very great art the world has ever known--first _to see_; and then _to dream_ and then _on the morrow to paint_. Impressionism cut out the _dreams_--it painted what it _saw_. There were never in the world peasants such as Millet painted, or woods such as Daubigny painted. People thought there were until the Impressionists came and turned on the light. Corot’s silvery glades have a closer relationship to nature. He felt the reaction that was in the air. He was almost an [Illustration: