JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
admires (and to whom we shall return) from the painter in oils, whom he abhors, he sees the latter as "a heavy worker on canvas imbued with the old scruples about a scheme of colour and the old ceremonies."
But it is not enough to say that Millet was possessed by classic traditions and prejudices. In reality he was himself a classic painter, a great French classic of the race of Poussin; and if we would appreciate him justly we must judge him from that point of view and according to those principles. Far from seeing in him one of those revolutionary painters who create a new art, we must see him as a mind and painter of the seventeenth century transplanted into our world and applying an art of former days to the presentation of our contemporary world.[1] This is precisely his originality. His faults and his merits are those of a whole
- ↑ It should be added that this transposition is rendered easier by his choice of subjects. The world painted by Millet is the world of the common people and of the country, which is least subject to the laws of change and retains, even at the present day, many features in common with the life of two centuries ago.
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