Page:François-Millet.djvu/151

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JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

that finds its expression especially in his pictures of children.

***

Having now marked out the main lines of his artistic development, let us try to define the technical methods and the style of Millet.

The first point to be noted is, that like most of the great French landscape painters of his time he did not paint nature from nature; he painted it in his studio. Some peasants and his maid served him as models. Most frequently however he contented himself with a few studies, rapid sketches, or even with the impression that he brought home from his lonely walks and long meditations. "He did not feel, he often said to me" (Wheelwright is the speaker) "the need of studying nature upon the spot, though he did sometimes take rudimentary notes in a pocket-sketch book no larger than one's hand. All the scenes that he desired to reproduce were fixed in his

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