Sale 2532 - 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings, March 5, 2020

6 c JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET Paysan debout et Enfant . Charcoal on canvas with a prepared gray ground, circa 1871-72. 695x430 mm; 27 1 / 2 x17 inches. With the artist’s initials ink stamp (Lugt 1460, lower right recto). Ex-collection Pierre Geismar, with his ink stamp (Lugt 2078b, twice, lower left and lower right recto); sold Lasquin and Bine, Paris, November 15, 1928, this work listed in the catalogue (sold for 20,100 Fr., according to Lugt); Phyllis Hattis Fine Arts, New York, with the label; private collection, Connecticut. This is a study for Millet’s (1814-1875) oil painting La Famille du Paysan , 1871-72, now at the National Museum Cardiff, Wales (see below). The painting, while unfinished, illustrates a peasant family consisting of a mother, father and child standing in their farmyard. Their static poses and stark faces evoke the determination and dignity of their place in society, a typical theme for Millet who portrayed physical labor as virtuous and imbued a sense of religion into his scenes of peasant life. The British artist Walter Sickert (1860-1942), seeing La Famille du Paysan, compared the child to the Biblical Samson, supporting the legs of his parents as if they were the pillars of the household. In the 1840s Millet began exhibiting works at the Salons in Paris, and shocked the public with his unabashed portrayals of rural life. He had his first commercial success with Le Vanneur , which was exhibited at the Salon of 1848. Shortly thereafter in 1849 he moved to Barbizon in the Fontainebleau forest, where, along with Théodore Rousseau (1817- 1878) and Charles-François Daubigny (1812-1867), he became a lead proponent of the Barbizon School. Millet spent the majority of the rest of his life in Barbizon, beside f leeing the area at the outset of the Franco-Prussian war. The present charcoal study was likely started soon after his return to Barbizon in late 1871. [40,000/60,000] Millet, La Famille du Paysan , oil on canvas, 1972-72 ©National Museum Cardiff, Wales