Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young PeopleBacon, Mary Schell Hoke
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Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young People
Bacon, Mary Schell Hoke
Art -- Juvenile literature; Painters -- Juvenile literature; Painting -- Juvenile literature
They arrived tired and hungry toward evening, and went to Ganne's Inn,
where there were Rousseau, Diaz, and other artists who like themselves
had come in search of a nice, clean, picturesque place in which to
starve, if they had to. Those who were just sitting down to supper
welcomed the newcomers, for they had been there long enough to form a
colony and fraternity ways. One of these was to take a certain great
pipe from the wall, and ask the newcomer to smoke; and according to
the way he blew his "rings" he was pronounced a "colourist" or
"classicist." The two friends blew the smoke, and at once the other
artists were able to place Jacque. He was a colourist; but what were
they to say about Millet who blew rings after his own fashion.
"Oh, well!" he cried. "Don't trouble about it. Just put me down in a
class of my own!"
"A good answer!" Diaz answered. "And he looks strong and big enough to
hold his own in it!" Thus the newcomers took their places in the life
of Barbizon--the place whose name ended in "zon," and Millet's real
work began. His first wife lived only two years, but he married
again. All this time he was following his conscience in the matter of
his work, and selling almost nothing. In a letter to a friend he tells
how dreadfully poor they are, although his new wife was the most
devoted helpful woman imaginable, known far and near as "Mère Millet."
The artist wrote to Sensier, his friend, who aided him: "I have
received the hundred francs. They came just at the right time. Neither
my wife nor I had tasted food in twenty-four hours. It is a blessing
that the little ones, at any rate, have not been in want."
The revolution of 1848 had come before Millet went to Barbizon, and he
like other men had to go to war. Then the cholera appeared, and these
things interrupted his work; and after such troubles people did not
begin buying pictures at once. Rousseau was famous now, but Millet
lived by the hardest toil until one day he sold the "Woodcutter" to
Rousseau himself, for four hundred francs. Rousseau had been very
poor, and it grieved him to see the trials and want of his friend, so
he pretended that he was buying the picture for an American. That
picture was later sold at the Hartmann sale for 133,000 francs. Millet
was now forty years old, and had not yet been recognised as a
wonderful man by any but his brother artists. He was truly "in a class
of his own." He had learned to love Barbizon, and cried: "Better a
thatched cottage here than a palace in Paris!" and we have the picture
in our minds of Millet followed patiently and lovingly by "Mère
Millet" in the peasant dress which she always wore, that she might be
ready at a moment's notice to pose for his figures. Then there were
his little children and his sunny, simple, fraternal surroundings,
which make his life the most picturesque of all artists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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