Jean-François Millet (1814-1875)
"Gust of Wind" (c. 1872)
Oil on canvas
Realism
Located in the National Museum Cardiff, Cardiff, Wales
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Jean-François Millet Woman Sewing Beside her Sleeping Child ca. 1858-62
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Dandelions (1867-68). Jean-Francois Millet.
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Jean-François Millet, Haystacks in Autumn, ca. 1874, oil/canvas (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
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Wood gatherers, 1858 by Jean Francois Millet (1814-1875), oil on canvas
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THE SHEEPFOLD, MOONLIGHT (c.1860) by JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET
On this strange night, a herd of sheep wanders around the sheep fold, some already inside the pen, as the shepherd, with his staff in his hand, leads others through the gates. His two dogs are waiting for him behind the hut, ready to help. The shepherd’s hut is outlined against the dark sky, and the big three-quarters moon hangs over the horizon, illuminating the night so he can do his job without help.
Only the silhouette of the shepherd and the hut connect one realm with the other. In this mundane scene of a shepherd working in a familiar landscape, the atmosphere is full of mystery, implying a connection to the spiritual and emotional worlds of Romanticism
Romantic ideas of the shepherd as a CHRIST figure leading his flock to safety are evoked, and the work barely avoids being allegorical, because it is the moon, rather than a spiritual (and thus, incorporeal) body that illuminates his world.
Interestingly, MILLET'S tableau scene departs from his customary format by placing the largest figures in the middle and far distance, rather than in the foreground.This means that the viewer’s attention is more deeply embedded in the composition, with the moon as the central focal point. The dark, limited palette allows the brilliant moon to contrast beautifully with the other elements of the composition.
The black clouds and the shadows of the sheep form brackets that frame the scene from top to bottom, while the man’s figure and the shepherd’s hut do likewise from side to side, essentially moving the viewer’s focus to the shepherd and from the shepherd to the moon through his directional gaze.
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The monumental, solitary figure of a cloaked shepherd, sunlight framing his head like a halo, stands watch over his flock of sheep in the French countryside. Jean-Francois Millet’s dignified yet unglorified depictions of the rural laborers near his home were popular in France and the United States, where urban audiences perceived them as peaceful, spiritual, and nostalgic.
Other viewers saw in their realism unadorned visions of contemporary poverty. A few years after the Civil War, one American writer described Millet’s paintings as portraying “the patient, hopeless weariness of the overtasked workman. . . .we saw the unpaid slave of our country, the pauper workman of France and England.”
📷 Jean-François Millet (French, 1814-1875). Shepherd Tending His Flock, early 1860s. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of William H. Herriman, 21.31
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Jean-François Millet The Goose Girl ca. 1863
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