Studio: international art (10.1897)

Reviews of Recent Publications

training; in fact, it is scarcely saying too much to
say that it is necessary to have neither. The painter
of genius must be a self-impelled, self-directed
power; the force which drives him along must
come from within, as Jean Francois' life proves.

The story of Millet's life, told in part, and not
without the desire to add to himself reflected glory,
by Alfred Sensier, was fragmentary. Mrs. Ady has
attempted, and with success, the task of presenting
to the world a full and comprehensive record of
that life. Occasionally she has, perhaps, been
guilty of some redundancy. It was scarcely neces-
sary to give Millet's letters to Sensier and to para-
phrase them too. Again, although it was well to
correct certain false impressions which Sensier's
work left on the mind of the average reader, Mrs.
Ady has by no means altered facts. Millet was
essentially a man of sorrows. That in his wife he
had an almost perfect helpmeet, a woman absolute
in her fidelity and loyalty—fidelity and loyalty of
thought as well as act—who believed in him and
in a measure understood him, is certain. But that
she was Millet's intellectual equal is not to be sup-
posed for a moment. Had she been, these letters
to Sensier would never have been written. Again,
the constant headaches and other physical ills from
which Millet suffered; the cruel struggle with
poverty which dogged his footsteps until they had
already entered the path which led to the grave;
the persistent abuse and neglect which were his
portion, would in the aggregate have made any man
a man of sorrows, had his temperament been ever
so cheerful. Millet's temperament was not cheer-
ful. He was not lugubrious, complaining, or fret-
ful. But he was profoundly imbued with that
deep melancholy which must ever be the portion
of the man who concludes a sacred alliance with
Nature.

It must be confessed that the constant reference
to Millet as a peasant-painter is somewhat mislead-
ing. Millet's culture was of the highest. He knew
nothing of the artificial externals of human affairs,
of markets and values, of pounds, shillings, and
pence; but of the things that are vital and eternal
—of literature, the finest the world has produced—
he knew everything that it is essential to know.
This knowledge gave him a solid groundwork upon
which he founded and built his own philosophy.
The basis of Millet's philosophy was as simple as
that of his art, because it was elemental. As to the
direct teaching of this art, Millet himself declared
over and over again that it had none. A great poet
is not to be confounded with a mere propagandist.
Millet scorned to associate himself with the men

who imagined that they had discovered in a cut-
and-dried shibboleth a panacea for human ills. He
loved the people of the fields; he sympathised
with their trials and sorrows, the joys and the com-
pensations of their lives, because he knew them all.
He was never, however, in any sense of the word a
propagandist, much less a mere Socialist or Anar-
chist. Nevertheless, his life reads like a great epic:
his pictures constitute the greatest epic of the fields,
and the dwellers and toilers in them, that the world
has ever seen in paint. In reading his life we see
in his ancestry, in his bringing up, in his environ-
ment, the forces which went to make him. And
they made him the most complete and satisfying
painter of "La Terre" of all time. It is not too
much to say of Millet's art that it is monumental,
and the monument is of colossal proportions. Of
facility he had next to none; of cleverness, in the
ordinary sense of the word, as little; but he had an
enormous soul, a phenomenal gift of seeing, and a
memory, for such things as he wanted to remember,
of extraordinary accuracy and tenacity. To this he
added an all-consuming desire to give outward ex-
pression to the things he had seen and felt. In his
life he turned his back on everything that was
superficial and ephemeral—Paris and all its works,
academies and all their recipes. In art, too, he
vigorously excluded everything which was imma-
terial or frivolous. As he himself expressed it, he
gave to art everything—body and soul. He painted
great pictures because he was a great man.

In the compass of a short article dealing with a
subject of such magnitude, what can be said ? This,
however, may be said: that Miss Julia Cartwright,
in giving the world this clearly and carefully written
monograph of Jean Francois Millet, has earned
the gratitude of every one capable of valuing and
reverencing greatness. The book is full of pathos,
full of beauty. We cannot all possess a Millet,
but to possess such a work as this is to possess a
volume which would add dignity to any library.
The story of Jean Francois Millet's life is an en-
trancing one, from the moment of his birth to that
of his death. To contemplate that life at close
quarters is to renew one's faith in humanity.

Jas. Stanley Little.

Japanese Illustration. A History of Woodcuts
and Colour-Printing in Japan. By Edward F.
Strange. (London: George Bell & Sons.)
12^. 6d. net.—The beauty of old Japanese colour-
prints is now being recognised more generally by
Western connoisseurs than has hitherto been the
case. Collectors of art objects, who a few years
ago would not have looked twice at a Japanese

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