JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
it presents itself as a religious painting," and Gerôme: "He is a Jupiter in wooden shoes." Theophile Silvestre remarks: "His pictures are expressed like psalms. This is the antique in painting." Even Baudelaire, when he desires to criticise Millet whom he does not like, does so not by denying but by emphasising the classical nature of his talent. "M. Millet," he says, particularly aims at style; he does not conceal the fact, he displays it and glories in it. But style does not succeed with him. Instead of simply drawing out the poetry inherent in his subject, he wishes, at all costs, to add something to it. All his peasants are outcasts on a small scale and have pretensions to philosophy, and melancholy, and the Raphaelesque." Baudelaire had too little simplicity of mind to understand that any man of his own day could still be naturally and simply classical as Millet was; but his ill-will did not prevent him from noting pretty fairly the essential characteristics of this art which was so much opposed to his own. He is quite right in saying that "Millet always adds something" to his subject. It is indeed the principal interest of his works that he
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