Jean-François Millet will feature in a forthcoming exhibition at the National Gallery, which commends the beauty and quiet power of Millet’s work – an artist who created some of the most timeless paintings of the 19th century, exemplified by The Angelus, The Gleaners and The Sower. Millet was the key artist of the Barbizon School based in a wooded area south of Paris. It was he who put representations of the poorest of rural workers on the walls of the elite Paris Salon.
After the 1848 revolution and ensuing political changes, he became a figurehead of a more realistic approach to art, rejecting themes of history and mythology and replacing them with ordinary working people, the subjects he knew best.
His combination of subject and the effects of light and tone saw his popularity soar at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. (National Gallery, London)
We will examine the importance of Millet to nineteenth-century art, the reasons why he became such a major figure, and how he impacted upon later artists, particularly Van Gogh and Pissarro.
An optional visit to the National Gallery exhibition 'Millet: Life on the Land' is included in order to observe his work at first hand.