Mr. J. S. Forbes's Millet Drawings friends, or of well-known collectors in Paris; a few may be seen in the Luxembourg gallery. But one important collection, we rejoice to think, has its home in this country. Mr. James Staats Forbes, the well-known patron of French and Dutch art, is the fortunate owner of sixty or more examples of Millet's art-oil-paintings, pastels, chalk drawings, and pen or pencil studies. This distinguished connoisseur was one of the first to appreciate the 'men of 1830,' and at the present time his collection of the Barbizon school is by far the finest to be found outside the walls of Paris, if, indeed, it has any rival in the French capital. His Corots and Daubignys, his Rousseaus and Troyons, his Diaz and Monticellis, are as fine in quality as they are numerous in quantity. They illustrate the style of these different artists at every period of their lives, and form a collection of the most complete and representative character. But from the first Millet's art appealed to Mr. Forbes in an especial manner, and by dint of unceasing exertion he has succeeded in securing much of his favourite master's best work. M. Chauchard, it is true, may boast the possession of the far-famed Angelus, of the Bergère of the Van Pract collection, as well as the Vanneur of 1848, and the winter version of the Parc aux Moutons. But Mr. Forbes owns the superb Amour Vainqueur, in which Sir John Millais always declared the Norman painter rivalled Titian in mastery of the nude and wealth of glowing colour; he has the charming portrait of the brown-eyed peasant-girl who sat as a model for the woman in the Angelus, and the beautiful pastel of the Angelus itself, which in some respects surpasses the famous oil-painting. This exquisite version of the familiar theme, which Mr. Forbes bought at the sale of one of Millet's earliest patrons, Madame Roederer of the Havre, was executed some years after the picture, from which it differs in several particulars. While in his original D conception the painter wished to represent an autumn evening when the Angelus du soir was ringing, in his pastel we have the plain of Barbizon on a spring morning, when the rosy flush of sunrise is stealing over the sky and the first awakening of new life is seen in the moss-grown clods and grassy blades at the peasants' feet. Among the other pastels belonging to Mr. Forbes are a well-known version of La Baratteuse, a comely Gréville fermière, in a high white cap, with bare arms, and finely-modelled bust, working the old-fashioned churn in her dairy; a woman pasturing her cow under a clump of wind-swept trees on a stormy winter day; a couple of patient donkeys lying down with drooping ears under the heavy rain that beats upon the plain; and a lovely water-colour of an Auvergne shepherdess watching her flock from the top of a grassy hillock, while the blue sky and rolling clouds overhead, and the grass and wooded slopes at her feet, are bathed in a flood of sunlight. Besides these important and varied examples of the painter's skill in oil, watercolour, and pastel, Mr. Forbes owns a large number of Millet's finished black chalk drawings, and of his smaller sketches and studies. Some of these he has been lucky enough to pick up for twenty or thirty francs on the quays of the Seine, others he has followed through many changes of fortune with the passion and instincts of the true collector, until, after years of watching and waiting, the prize has unexpectedly dropped into his hands. Now, thanks to his generous permission, forty examples from this magnificent collection will be reproduced in the pages of this magazine, a privilege which our readers cannot fail to appreciate. Among the sketches which Millet afterwards developed into larger works, Mr. Forbes possesses no less than six studies for Les Glaneuses, the great picture which is now one of the glories of the But sketch of the gleaner stooping down to pick up the ears of corn, which he afterwards drew more carefully in the pencil study that is here reproduced. The next drawing is on a larger scale, and gives us all the chief elements of the picture. Three women are introduced in the foreground, a second in the same attitude as the first, bending down to pick up the corn with her right hand, and with the left holding the sheaf which she has already gleaned, while a few steps to the right a third figure is seen resting on the ground with her bundle in her lap. In the background we have the farmyard as we see it to-day on the outskirts of Barbizon, with the newly-made ricks of wheat, the labourers stacking the sheaves of corn, and the laden waggon at their feet. The wheels of the waggon, the horses standing by idle, and the man thatching the rick, are all slightly indicated. In the third drawing that we give here,3 which formerly belonged to Alfred Lebrun's collection, the painter's idea is still further developed. All the main features of the composition are repeated. The action of the labourers at work on the rick is admirably given, the forms of the men and horses are carefully drawn. The short stubble of the harvest field, the newly-cut ears of corn, are reproduced with precise accuracy; the figures of the gleaners themselves, their sun-bonnets, aprons, and sabots, are all correctly drawn and shaded. But there is one important alteration in the central group. The third woman, instead of crouching on the ground, is represented standing up, holding a handful of corn in one hand, and stooping forward with the other hand outstretched to pick up the ears of wheat. She is older than her companions, her limbs are growing stiff, and she can only bend down with difficulty to do the work which the younger gleaners find so easy. Louvre. The series is of especial interest as showing the different stages by which the painter's creations were built up, and the profound research after design which was so marked a feature of his art. From his boyhood Jean-François had a quick eye for all that was significant in gesture and attitude, and the first of his drawings which attracted the notice of his parents was a portrait of an old man, bent double with age and infirmity, whom he met on his way home from mass one Sunday morning. When in his struggling days in Paris he proposed to make drawings of reapers in fine attitudes,' the dealer shrugged his shoulders scornfully and shook his head at so preposterous an idea. Millet went doggedly on his way, and a day came when dealers laughed no longer and the world was glad to accept the ideal which he held up before its eyes. It was from a little rough pen-and-ink sketch of a young Gréville labourer, flinging the grain into the furrows as he walked along the hillside, that his great picture of Le Semeur was originally painted. Many from Millet's notebook have similar pages been piously preserved by his children. In the house of his daughter Marguerite, for instance, we recognized sketches of the children watching the new-born lamb in the farmyard, of the group of labourers in the Moissonneurs, of the young girls looking up at the flight of wild geese through the sky, and of the sheep and dog in the Bergère, as well as the young shepherdess's own head. In the same way the first idea of the Glaneuses is to be found in a little sketch, consisting of a few strokes in pen and ink, torn from one of In these early days Millet's notebooks. when he first settled at Barbizon, he was never tired of watching the labourers at work in the harvest field near the farm at the end of the village, where the great plain de la Bière stretches towards Chailly. Here, one August day, he made a rough The composition gains immeasurably from this change. The awkward line made Mr. J. S. Forbes's Millet Drawings by the three figures in the foreground is broken, and the contrast between the older woman and her companions adds fresh interest and significance to the painter's theme. A further improvement is introduced in our fourth drawing. There we have only two figures, that of the elder woman and one of the original gleaners. But the action of this younger woman is slightly altered. Instead of exactly repeating the attitude of the companion figure, her body is slightly turned to the right and her outstretched arm is straightened. By this means monotony is avoided, and the design gains greatly in strength and beauty of rhythm. This, then, was the form which Millet finally adopted for his great picture. The two figures given in the last drawing and the original gleaner of the first sketch. make up with which we the central group are all familiar. But many other alterations and improvements were made before the composition was complete. The shape of the picture, which had originally been painted on an upright canvas, was altered and widened. The figures in the background were elaborated, and several fresh motives were introduced. The wheat ricks were pushed further back, the waggon and horses became more prominent; the farmer himself was seen on horseback, riding to and fro among the shocks of corn, watching the labourers actively engaged in carrying the last load home, while the low roofs of the village and the homestead half hidden among the trees were allowed to appear in the distance. So, by slow and painful steps, at the cost of much toil and trouble, after many long days of brooding and anxious nights, the great conception was finally evolved. It was a dark moment in Millet's life. As usual, he was sorely pressed for money, and he suffered acutely from headaches during the winter and spring of 1857, when he was in the act of painting this picture. 4 Reproduced on page 59 'I am working like a slave,' he wrote to Rousseau, 'to get my picture of Les Glaneuses done in time. I really do not know what will be the result, after all the trouble that I have taken! There are days when I feel as if this unhappy picture had no meaning.... Both physically and morally I am in a state of collapse. You are right: life is very sad. There are few cities of refuge; and in the end you understand those who sighed after a place of refreshment, of light and peace. And you understand, too, why Dante made some of his personages speak of the years which they spent on earth as "the time of my debt.""" At length, however, the work was done, the picture finished, and the world once more rejoiced over a new and immortal birth. But when Les Glaneuses appeared in the Salon of 1857, the majority of critics were bitterly hostile. One writer denounced Millet's gleaners as dangerous beasts of prey, whose angry gestures threaten the very existence of society. Another called them fierce viragos marching ready booted and spurred to the fray. Saint-Victor scoffed at their gigantic and pretentious ugliness. Jean Rousseau declared that he saw the guillotines of 1793 distinctly in the background. Edmond About alone, to his credit be it remembered, recognized the grandeur and serenity of the composition, which moved him, he owned, as deeply as the great religious paintings of old masters. The result of all this clamour was that Les Glaneuses did not find a purchaser for several months, and in the end was bought for the small sum of 2,000 fr. by M. Binder, a merchant of L'Île-Adam, whom the painter Jules Dupré introduced to Millet. Forty years afterwards, at the close of the exhibition of 1889, it was purchased for 300,000 fr., and presented by Madame Pommery to the Louvre. Les Glaneuses, we may here remind our readers, also forms the subject of one of Millet's finest etchings. Two years before the picture was painted he had made several experiments in etching, with a view to recording his impressions in some simpler and easier way, and in the autumn of 1857 he executed a plate from Les Glaneuses. The subject lent itself admirably to this method of reproduction; the noble lines and simple grandeur of the composition. produce a striking effect, and the different gradations of light and atmosphere are rendered in a masterly way. The second group of studies that we give here are generally known as Les Lavandières, although the more correct title of Le Linge is sometimes applied to the finished drawing. During the first winter that he spent at Barbizon, in the year 1850, Millet had already painted a picture of washerwomen for M. de Saint-Pierre, one of his earliest patrons. In the four drawings which are now the property of Mr. Forbes, the artist returns to his old conception, and after his wont gives us a new and improved version of the former subject. We have here a remarkable instance of the way in which Millet could invest the simplest act of household labour with monumental grandeur-could, in his own words, make the trivial express the sublime. By his firm of classic principles and comgrasp plete mastery of form and movement, he gives these peasant women, intent on fulfilling their task, an unforgettable dignity, and lifts their commonplace action into the loftiest realm of ideal art. In one version of the theme, which excited great admiration at the exhibition of 1859, he represents his peasant women kneeling on the banks of the river, wringing out the clothes, while the full moon rises behind the tall poplar trees on the further shore. In the drawing of the Forbes collection the hour is also that of evening, the shadows are lengthening, and the day's The clothes have work is nearly done. been washed and dried, and one young girl, standing on rising ground, piles the linen on the shoulders of her companion who is about to start on her homeward way. In the first sketch that we give here 5 the girl stands on a grassy mound, but in the finished drawing she is raised considerably higher on a rocky boulder, a change which adds greatly to the effect of the group. Behind these central figures the wet clothes hang on a wooden rail, and a third woman is seen carrying a pitcher of water up the steep bank. 6 Besides this design, we have two landscape studies that were evidently intended for the background of the composition." Here Millet shows us the osiers growing thickly along the opposite shore, a herd of cows feeding in the pastures on the riverside, and the figure of a man dredging from a punt that lies midway in the stream. These different motives are all introduced in the first sketch,5 which once belonged to Millet's friend and biographer, Alfred Sensier, and is reproduced in his life of the painter. But in the finished drawing the trees are left out, and only the fisherman in the boat, and the cows coming down to drink in the river, are brought in. A crescent moon hangs in the eastern heavens, and the figures stand out dark against the clear evening sky. We see the silvery moonlight shining through the rising mist, and the forms of cattle and boatman reflected in the smooth water. There is a breath of freshness in the air and a sense of deep repose; the day's labour, we feel, is ended, and the hour of rest draws near. say "The most important part of colourtone atmosphere,' Millet was fond of ing, can be perfectly rendered in black and white.' And certainly both tone and atmosphere are rendered with incomparable truth in this noble drawing. The picture is complete, and no words are needed to explain its charm. " Page 61. (To be continued.) 6 Page 67. 7 Pages 63 and 65. 1 |