Page:François-Millet.djvu/188

JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET seem to hear a French writer of the seventeenth century and of the school of Boileau, speaking. Everywhere must be a ruling idea, the "mother-idea," which governs the work, and according to the laws of which all the elements that contribute to the action are co-ordinated on a rigorous plan—all others being mercilessly shorn away as useless.

It is well to remark, however, that these principles are not those of Millet alone, but of Théodore Rousseau too, though he appears so unlike Millet and so much occupied with technical method and with arrangement of colours. The Barbizon painters are not, whatever may be supposed, essentially colourists; they have, above all, the classic French sense of composition, of the central idea and the unity of the whole. "Form is the first thing to be observed," said Rousseau to one of his pupils, M. L. Letronne. "Every touch is to be of value to the whole and to express something." "He always insisted upon this," continues Letronne, "and spoke but very little to me of colour. 'You thought perhaps,' said he, 'that in coming to a colourist you would be spared drawing?' Another day he 170