It was always his first aim to make his people look as if they
belonged to their station. The "mute inglorious Milton" and Maud
Muller with her "nameless longings" had no place on his canvases. His
was the genuine peasant of field and farm, no imaginary denizen of the
poets' Arcady. "The beautiful is the fitting," was his final summary
of æsthetic theory, and the theory was put into practice on every
canvas.

In point of composition Millet's pictures have great excellence. "I
try not to have things look as if chance brought them together," he
said, "but as if they had a necessary bond between them." So nothing
is accidental, but every object, however small, is an indispensable
part of the whole scheme.

An important characteristic of his work is its power to suggest
the third dimension of space. The figures have a solid, tangible
appearance, as if actually alive. The Gleaners, the Woman Churning,
and the Man with the Hoe are thoroughly convincing in their reality.

The picture of the Gleaners especially has that so-called "quality of
circumambient light" which circulates about the objects, so to speak,
and gives them position in space. Millet's landscapes also have
a depth of spaciousness which reaches into infinite distance. The
principles of composition are applied in perspective as well as
laterally. We can look into the picture, through it, and beyond it, as
if we were standing in the presence of nature.

Mr. Bernhard Berenson goes so far as to say that this art of "space
composition," as he terms it, can "directly communicate religious
emotion," and explains on this ground the devotional influence of