The _Women Gleaning_ (No. 644, Plate LII.) may be considered his supreme achievement, and an epitome of his whole art. Millet alone could have invested so bald and unpromising a subject with so much epic grandeur. There is in the rhythmic repetition of the action of the two women in the centre of the composition a sense of the inevitable hopeless monotony of labour in the fields, even if the picture is not “a plea against the misery of the people.” The same struggle for existence and the resulting physical fatigue are admirably expressed in the statuesquely silhouetted figure of _The Weed-burner_ (No. 2890). _The Woodcutter_ (No. 2895), _The Strawbinders_ (No. 2892), and _The Winnower_ (No. 2893) all exemplify this phase of Millet’s art. The domestic life of the peasantry is treated with equally profound sympathy in _Maternal Precaution_ (No. 2894), _La Couseuse_ (No. 644A), and _La Lessiveuse_ (No. 2891). Among his comparatively rare pure landscape subjects _The Church of Gréville_ (No. 641), which was found in an unfinished state in the artist’s studio after his death, takes very high rank. It is as remarkable for the simple telling truth with which the normal aspect of the landscape is rendered, as the _Spring_ (No. 643) is for the realisation of a more uncommon effect—a rainbow and the shrill accent of sunlight in the orchard under the leaden grey of the departing thunder clouds. DAUMIER What Millet did for the life of the country, Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) did for the life of the town, of which he was a shrewd and critical observer. But his long practice as a caricaturist made him look upon the types that engaged his brush with a certain cruel bitterness which is far removed from Millet’s human sympathy. With a palette restricted almost to black and grey, Daumier yet proved himself a great colourist through the infallible accuracy of his tone-values and the suggestion of rich colour in his almost monochrome schemes. His design is as massive and monumental as Millet’s. The touch of the _macabre_, which is so characteristic of Daumier’s art, is very evident in _The Thieves and the Donkey_ (No. 2937). The _Portrait of the Painter Théodore Rousseau_ (No. 2938) holds a hint of the caricaturist’s vision. COURBET