JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
ponded with his political or literary interests. He would never have placed a picture of Rembrandt's in his own house. Victor Hugo puts Louis Boulanger and Delacroix on the same level. George Sand has a woman's prudence, and gets out of the question with fine musical words. Alexander Dumas is under the thumb of Delacroix, and apart from him does not think freely. I have not been able to dig out a single really felt page in Balzac, Eugène Sue, Frédéric Soulié, Barbier, Méry, etc.—a single page that might serve us as a guide, or that bears witness to a real understanding of art. Proudhon's work on art is a magnificent bit of special pleading, full of ingenious sallies, but it is a lecture fit for the blind asylum."[1]
- ↑ This is P. J. Proudhon's work "On the Principles and Social Destination of Art." At first sight it would seem as though Millet might have sympathised with the programme put forth by Proudhon; (To paint men in the sincerity of their nature and their habits, at their work, accomplishing their civic and domestic duties, with their actual countenances, above all without posturing; to surprise them in the undress of their consciousness, as an aim of general educa-
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