JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
then little by little he introduced pastels, adding pale shades of colour; and finally used coloured chalks only, producing in this way about a hundred large subjects. In these he impresses us as a genuinely great master. Even those who, like Huysmans, are most opposed to Millet's art, recognise the equal power and originality both of his feeling and his technique in this medium. His faults disappear. The air is more buoyant, the light more liquid. Connoisseurs delight in the novelty of his method in pastel, in "his black chalk work, his thread-like outlines, his trails of pins, his borders with their cunning flavour of coloured chalks." Here we feel Millet to be in his own province of pure expression reduced to its essential elements. Here we feel that he is in direct contact with nature; the spontaneous impression which he receives from her is not stopped upon its way and chilled or falsified by manual difficulties or by that laborious application which is sometimes felt a little too much in some of his pictures. He says directly what he thinks, and his beholder seizes the meaning wholly, freely, and at first sight;—
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