JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET

Born into a farming family in Normandy, Millet moved to the village of Barbizon in 1849 where he put the people who spent their life working on the land, often the poorest of the poor in 19th-century France, at the heart of his work. He knew these people and his realistic, unsentimental approach to painting them was completely new. See his iconic ‘L’Angelus’ (1857‒9) from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, a painting typical of the dignified way he captured the working people of his age.

A husband and wife stand with their heads bowed. Lit by an almost ethereal, filtered light, they’ve stopped working in the fields to say the Angelus prayer. Admired and copied by Vincent van Gogh, he inspired Impressionists and Post-Impressionist artists including Edgas Degas and Camille Pissarro. His combination of subject and effects of light and tone saw his popularity soar at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Experience the beauty and quiet power of Millet’s work – an artist who created some of the most realist yet timeless paintings of the 19th century.