DOI issue:
The International Studio (June, 1908)
DOI article:Cary, Elisabeth Luther: The Barbizon painters
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28254#0507
The Scrip
natural to look for the signs of it in his painting.
Yet what do we see in his reapers and sowers and
weeders and shepherds ? Not, certainly, these tor-
tured or worn and weary burden bearers. Consider
the Sower in the Vanderbilt Collection at the Metro-
politan Museum, with how free a motion, with how
blithe a gesture he moves through the broad field,
enriching and enlivening the earth. Nothing is here
of weariness; it is not only the poetry but the joy of
motion. Then, if we turn to the Woman Drawing
Water in the same collection, that handsome peasant
girl blinking at the sunshine in her eyes, we get
from it the impression that Millet himself says
he intended, of work done easily and cheerfully, as
a part of the daily task and the habit of an indus-
trious life. Again, in The New Born-Calf in the
Art Institute of Chicago, the two men carry the
weight of the animal on its
litter with the power of
strong, well-seasoned
muscles. And the peasant
women with their children
on their arm, how lightly
they hold them and with
how little thought of effort!
All this, of course, testifies
to the adequacy of his
draughtsmanship, but it
also testifies to the charac-
ter of his vision and of his
mind. He pities those who
labor in the sweat of their
brow, but he admires their
broad forms filling their
rough garments, he sees
how well they fit the land-
scape, and with that classic
bent upon which his critics
comment almost with one
accord, he generalizes not
only the individual figures
into large, nobler lines and
forms, but also inevitably
their tasks. It is the work
of the world that they are
doing, and work is a good
and not an evil thing. They
tell us this in the splendor
of their health and physi-
cal force. Although he
knew the distortions and
suffering produced by labor
misapplied under wrong
conditions, he was not in-
clined to record it. When he was working on
his picture of a woman carding wool, he wrote
that he wanted to give the woman a grace and
calm not found in the workwomen of the suburbs;
he remembered the peasant women in his home at
Greville and wished to embody their type in his
figure. Millet, then, was a philosopher whose mes-
sage sustained by his admirable talent and his con-
scientious workmanship was one of pervasive cheer.
The more modern attitude is one of discourage-
ment. The toilers depicted by Meunier find it a
sore trial to carry their burden. How his wood-
cutter bends and strains under his huge bundle,
how his miners reveal in every line of their bent
backs a life spent in abnormal struggle! A French
critic some years ago called attention to the fact
that even a thinker such as Rodin conceived must
roperly of the Metropolitan Museum oj Art
atherine Wolfe Collection
:OLY FAMILY
By Permission
BY N. DIAZ
CXLIII
natural to look for the signs of it in his painting.
Yet what do we see in his reapers and sowers and
weeders and shepherds ? Not, certainly, these tor-
tured or worn and weary burden bearers. Consider
the Sower in the Vanderbilt Collection at the Metro-
politan Museum, with how free a motion, with how
blithe a gesture he moves through the broad field,
enriching and enlivening the earth. Nothing is here
of weariness; it is not only the poetry but the joy of
motion. Then, if we turn to the Woman Drawing
Water in the same collection, that handsome peasant
girl blinking at the sunshine in her eyes, we get
from it the impression that Millet himself says
he intended, of work done easily and cheerfully, as
a part of the daily task and the habit of an indus-
trious life. Again, in The New Born-Calf in the
Art Institute of Chicago, the two men carry the
weight of the animal on its
litter with the power of
strong, well-seasoned
muscles. And the peasant
women with their children
on their arm, how lightly
they hold them and with
how little thought of effort!
All this, of course, testifies
to the adequacy of his
draughtsmanship, but it
also testifies to the charac-
ter of his vision and of his
mind. He pities those who
labor in the sweat of their
brow, but he admires their
broad forms filling their
rough garments, he sees
how well they fit the land-
scape, and with that classic
bent upon which his critics
comment almost with one
accord, he generalizes not
only the individual figures
into large, nobler lines and
forms, but also inevitably
their tasks. It is the work
of the world that they are
doing, and work is a good
and not an evil thing. They
tell us this in the splendor
of their health and physi-
cal force. Although he
knew the distortions and
suffering produced by labor
misapplied under wrong
conditions, he was not in-
clined to record it. When he was working on
his picture of a woman carding wool, he wrote
that he wanted to give the woman a grace and
calm not found in the workwomen of the suburbs;
he remembered the peasant women in his home at
Greville and wished to embody their type in his
figure. Millet, then, was a philosopher whose mes-
sage sustained by his admirable talent and his con-
scientious workmanship was one of pervasive cheer.
The more modern attitude is one of discourage-
ment. The toilers depicted by Meunier find it a
sore trial to carry their burden. How his wood-
cutter bends and strains under his huge bundle,
how his miners reveal in every line of their bent
backs a life spent in abnormal struggle! A French
critic some years ago called attention to the fact
that even a thinker such as Rodin conceived must
roperly of the Metropolitan Museum oj Art
atherine Wolfe Collection
:OLY FAMILY
By Permission
BY N. DIAZ
CXLIII