Liberal Arts Blog — Jean-Francois Millet (1814–1875): “The Angelus,” “The Gleaners,” “The Shepherdess with Her Flock”
Liberal Arts Blog — Friday is the Joy of Art, Architecture, Design, Film, and All Things Visual Day
Today’s Topic: Jean-Francois Millet (1814–1875): “The Angelus,” “The Gleaners,” “The Shepherdess with Her Flock”
Millet was for Van Gogh “the painter of all mankind.” The Dutch artist would copy 21 of Millet’s paintings. Millet, having grown in Normandy eventually settled in Barbizon, on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest outside of Paris. His first wife died of tuberculosis at age 23. His second bore him nine children and stayed with him until his death at age 60. Today, three notes on three of Millet’s paintings. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
HOW MILLET’S “THE ANGELUS” CHANGED FRENCH INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW
1. It is not often that paintings change the law of a country. This happened with Jean-Francois Millet’s “The Angelus.” Millet sold it for a mere 1000 francs in 1865 but in 1889, fourteen years after his death it sold for over 500,000 francs. While “the owner of the painting made a huge profit,” the “family of the artist lived in poverty.” The legal change (the “droit de suite” or “right to follow”) provides for the artist to receive a fee on resale of their work.
2. A similar law passed in California in 1977 was judged unconstitutional in 2012 by Jacqueline Nguyen of the US District Court of Central California.
3. “On July 6, 2018, the US Circuit Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit ruled that the California Resale Royalties Act is preempted by the federal Copyreifht Act — which does not recognize an artist’s right to resale royalties. Now, only works resold from January 1, 1970 to January 1, 1978, when the Copyright Act became effective, are eligible for the royalty payment.”
“THE GLEANERS” (1857) CALLED “AN EPIC HYMN TO LABOR” — HUGELY INFLUENTIAL
1. Not well received with one critic remarking that it was an unsettling reminder of the “scaffolds of 1793.”
2. The relatively large size of the canvas (33 inches by 44 inches) was deemed appropriate only for religious and mythological subjects.
3. “Its imagery of bending peasant women gleaning was paraphrased frequently in works by younger artists such as Pissarro, Renoir, Seurat, and Van Gogh.”
NB: Are the oddly soft hues and lines of the painting designed to make the message of the painting less scary to the audience? (see sixth link below)
THE SHEPHERDESS WITH HER FLOCK (1864)
1. “Millet expressed a desire to paint a work showing a shepherdess with her flock as early as 1862. As his friend Alfred Sensier related, this theme “obsessed the artist’s mind” until he exhibited the work at the Paris Salon of 1864, where it was a great success…”
2. “Called a “refined canvas” by some and a “masterpiece” by others. It was particularly esteemed by the middle-classes in Paris, who preferred idealized paintings of rural life to caring about the hard life of real peasants.”
3. Other Millet paintings of shepherdesses include “Shepherdess seated on a rock” and “the Knitting Shepherdess” (seventh link below)
Jean-François Millet — Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_suite
The Angelus (painting) — Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gleaners
Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners — Smarthistory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C3%B6ller-M%C3%BCller_Museum
Shepherdess Seated on a Rock — Wikipedia
Shepherdess with her Flock — Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbizon_School
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh_OWS3k6tU
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned recently or ever related to art, sculpture, design, architecture, film, or anything visual.
This is your chance to make some one else’s day. And to cement in your own memory something cool or important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you totherwise would about something that is close to your heart.
