Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/113

JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET 271 his life, dividing his day between the labors of his farm in the morning hours, painting in his studio in the afternoon — he always preferred the half-light for painting — and in the evening enjoying the society of his wife and children and of such friends as might join the circle. Occasional visits to Paris, to the gal- leries, and to the studios of his artist-circle, kept him in touch with the world to which he belonged. His books, too, were his unfailing companions, though he never cared to stray far beyond the circle of his youthful friendships, Homer, and Virgil, and especially the Bible, which he looked upon as the book of painters, the inexhaustible source of the noblest and most touching subjects, capable of expression in the grandest forms. But it was in the rural life about him, the life in which he actively shared, that he found the world- wherein he could pour all his thoughts, feelings, and ex- periences with the certainty of seeing them emerge in forms answering to his conception. It was not until he came to Barbizon that be began truly to live the artist-life as he understood it, where the work is a faithful reflection of the enly things a man really cares for — the things he knows by heart. In the pictures painted at Barbizon, and in the multitude of slight sketches for subjects never painted, with finished drawings and pastels, Millet has composed a series of moral eclogues well worthy of a place with those of Virgil and Theocritus. All the world knows them ; all the world loves them : the " Mother Feeding Her Chil- dren," " The Peasant Grafting," " The First Step," " Going to Work," " The Sower," "The Gleaners," "The Sheep-Shearing," "The Angelus" — even to name them would carry us far beyond our limits. They made the fame of Millet while he still lived, although the pecuniary reward of his labors was not what they de- served nor what it would have been had he earlier found his true way or had his life been prolonged to the normal limit. He died in 1875 at the age of sixty- one. Since his death more than one of his pictures has been sold at a price ex- ceeding all that he earned during his whole lifetime. Seen from the world's side, there was much in his life that was sad and discouraging, but from the spiritual side there was far more to cheer and uplift. His private life was honorable and happy, his friends were many and among the chosen ones of the time, and he had the happiness of seeing his work accepted and rated at something like its true worth before he left it. <^n^t «r