JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
in the same way that some great musician, Schumann, for example, whose technical training, acquired late, often hampers his inspiration in his great orchestral works, delivers himself much more sincerely and with more simplicity and greatness in his Lieder and pieces for the piano. And while Millet's faults are mitigated here, his virtues show themselves at their full value. His modelling is magnificent and his touch large; these chalk drawings are works made to be seen at a distance, tone melts into tone, and their general effect is decorative.
In the case of an artist who subordinates the whole work to one leading idea, the value of the work is the value of the idea; details can never save it. It will be frankly good or bad; there is no middle course. This is the case with Millet, as About remarked: "What I adore in him," he wrote in 1866, "is that he sometimes goes wrong and makes absolutely earth-quaking false steps. When he happens to set his foot upon uncertain ground, he sinks in up to the neck. I like him better thus than if he had learned from a master the habit of always doing pretty well." His system
176
