. Fifty years of modern painting, Corot to Sargent . give the simpletruth, in order to make his men and women heroic; forassuredly there is in the labour with which man wins hisfood from the soil a patient heroism that expresses itself inform and action. Ruskin found fault with Millet becausehe did not show the faces of his toilers. This seems likethe objection of one who wished to object, for again andagain we see the face, and always it tells the same story :of patient fulfilment of the daily task, made possible byhuman affection and—as we know, and Millets Angelussuggests it—the hope of hea
. Fifty years of modern painting, Corot to Sargent . give the simpletruth, in order to make his men and women heroic; forassuredly there is in the labour with which man wins hisfood from the soil a patient heroism that expresses itself inform and action. Ruskin found fault with Millet becausehe did not show the faces of his toilers. This seems likethe objection of one who wished to object, for again andagain we see the face, and always it tells the same story :of patient fulfilment of the daily task, made possible byhuman affection and—as we know, and Millets Angelussuggests it—the hope of heaven. It has been said that Millets rendering of the life of thepeasant was a pessimistic one. We need not discuss thepoint at length. Always and everywhere it has not been ashe painted it. But it has been and it still is so ; and morethan this, it has been and still is in many a place some-thing far harder than it was even as he knew it. His own lot was but little better than that of thepeasantry around him. He could barely live and support his. LAMOUR VAINQUEUR J. F. MILLET THE IMPRESSIONISTS AND THEIR ALLIES 67 family, even in a life of the utmost simplicity, by the saleof pictures for which to-day the wealthiest compete—TheWinnower, The Soicer, The Gleaners, The Wood Sawyers,The Angelus. There is little need to name or to describehis pictures now, some of which, by reproduction, havebecome familiar in many a household. The painter of themknew at one time what it was for neither himself nor hiswife to taste food for a whole day, thankful if only theirchildren did not want. Such a price as this paid for areturn to nature and actual life makes the brief hardshipsof our Pre-Raphaelites seem by comparison little morethan such inconveniences as are gaily borne by a picnic-party. But Millet lived long enough to meet with bothrecognition and material success. We come now to Corot, for with those whom we may callthe second generation of the Barbizon group we are not atthe momen
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