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 The rejection of Death and the Woodcutter in 1859 awoke his combative instincts, and he answered it in 1862-63 by the challenge of the Man with a hoe, in which he made a clean sweep of everything that could possibly please, and displayed his roughness absolutely bare. It was, as he said himself, the sheer "cry of the earth" in all its savage reality.

This almost excessive affirmation of his individuality eased him; and, moved less by the criticisms which his work aroused than by the secret objections which his own taste raised against this passionate exaggeration of his style, he immediately went, in the impulse of reaction, to the other extreme. He wished to paint mythological pictures and illustrate Greek idylls. This, too, was the moment at which he made some decorative paintings. Though some of his friends, such as Burty and Piédagnel profess to admire these works, they savour too much of the awkward roughness of a modern peasant, transplanted suddenly into the world of Hellenic legend.

Millet returned to reality and to realism with the Peasants carrying a calf, in 1864