A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET.--PARENTAGE AND EARLY INFLUENCES.--HIS LIFE AT
BARBIZON.--VISITS TO MILLET IN HIS STUDIO.--HIS PERSONAL
APPEARANCE.--HIS OWN COMMENTS ON HIS PICTURES.--PASSAGES FROM HIS
CONVERSATION.

BY WILL H. LOW.


These papers, disclaiming any other authority than that which appertains
to the conclusions of a practising painter who has thought deeply on the
subject of his art, have nevertheless avoided the personal equation as
much as possible. A conscientious endeavor has been made to consider the
work of each painter in the place which has been assigned him by the
concensus of opinion in the time which has elapsed since his work was
done. In the consideration of Jean François Millet, however, I desire
for the nonce to become less impersonal, for the reason that it was my
privilege to know him slightly, and in the case of one who as a man and
as a painter occupies a place so entirely his own, the value of recorded
personal impressions is greater, at least for purposes of record, than
the registration of contemporary opinion concerning him.

I must further explain that, as a young student who received at his
hands the kindly reception which the master, stricken in health, and
preoccupied with his work, vouchsafed, I could only know him
superficially. It may have been the spectacle of youthful enthusiasm, or
the modest though dignified recognition of the reverence with which I
approached him, that made this grave man unbend; but it is certain that