Jean-François Millet

Born in Cherbourg, Millet worked on the family farm and was educated by his uncle, a priest. His artistic education began in Cherbourg with Mouchel and Langlois, mainly drawing from casts and copying paintings by old masters. He studied with Paul Delaroche at the cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1837 and 1839. After some less successful years, his style changed considerably in the mid 1840s. Millet's friendship in Paris with the painters who were rejecting the classical landscape tradition in favour of native scenery - Jacque, Troyon and Rousseau among them - was instrumental in his shift from pastoral idylls to peasant subjects, and in 1849 he settled in Barbizon. His friend Sensier, a civil servant who was his dealer from 1846, sold the greater part of his large collection of Millet drawings and paintings to Durand-Ruel in 1872.