The artistic origins of the French peasant-painter, Jean-Francois Millet: Between Normandy and Barbizon

Jean-François Millet was an active agent in forging his mythic identity as an “outsider artist” in mid 19th-century France. His unusual provincial peasant origin in Normandy was what gave his rural imagery unprecedented authority, according to his supportive critics. Yet, unlike the archetypical French peasant who is always the silent object of discourse, Millet easily conversed in the nostalgic and erudite language of pastoral art. In the artist's many letters, Millet both forged his reputation as an authority on peasant life and displayed his familiarity with classical literature and seminal biographic writing on the arts. By positioning himself between rural and urban experience and by locating his practice in Barbizon—literally between city and country—Millet could speak both of and for rural life. A careful study of his neo-rococo early work and the return to stylistically eclectic allegorical imagery in his late career challenges the canonical version of Millet's Realism. Millet's relationship to popular imagery of provincial life as well the assimilation of his images like the Angelus to the realm of women's popular culture are considered in the context of contemporary criticism and the religious revival in France. The shifting reception of both his “dirty” peasant imagery and pious peasant-painter biography from the 1850s to the fin-de-siècle has significantly influenced Millet's reputation in the 20th century.