Jean François Millet: A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the Painter, with Introduction and Interpretation — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Jean François Millet: A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the Painter, with Introduction and Interpretation
John Stuart Mill · en
The Man with the Hoe has probably caused more discussion than any
other of Millet's paintings. From the very first those who care only
for the subject of a picture have condemned it, while the critics have
praised its artistic qualities. Many have thought that Millet made
the subject as unpleasant as possible in order to show the degrading
effects of work. The same theory was suggested when the Sower and
the Gleaners appeared. The painter himself was much troubled by these
misunderstandings. "I have never dreamed of being a pleader in any
cause," he said. He simply painted life as he saw it, and had no
thought of teaching strange doctrines against labor. Indeed, no man
ever felt more deeply than he the dignity of labor.
When everything which could be said for or against the picture had
been exhausted on the other side of the Atlantic, the picture was
brought to this country and finally to the State of California. Here
the discussion began all over again. There were those who were so
impressed by the unpleasant character of the subject that they could
not find words strong enough to express their horror. The Man with
the Hoe was called "a monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched," a
"dread" and "terrible" shape, "a thing that grieves not and that never
hopes," a "brother to the ox," and many other things which would have
surprised and grieved Millet.
Of course, any one to whom the pathos of the subject itself appeals
so strongly can have little thought for the artistic qualities of the
picture. So Edwin Markham, the writer of the poem from which
these expressions are quoted, lets the subject lead him on into an
impassioned protest against "the degradation of labor,--the oppression
of man by man,"--all of which has nothing to do with the picture.
Millet was not one to care at all for what he called "pretty"
subjects, as we have already seen in studying the picture of the
Milkmaid. "He felt that only by giving to his figures the expression
and character which belonged to their condition could he obey the laws
of beauty in art, for he knew that a work of art is beautiful only
when it is homogeneous."[1]
This was the theory which he put into practice in the Man with the
Hoe, and one who understands well both his theories and his art sums
up the great painting in these words: "The noble proportions of the
figure alone would give this work a place among the greater artistic
conceptions of all time, while the severe and simple pathos of this
moment of respite in the interminable earth struggle, invests it with
a sublimity which belongs to eternal things alone." [2]
[Footnote 1: Pierre Millet in the _Century_.]
[Footnote 2: Henry Naegely.]
XVI
THE PORTRAIT OF MILLET