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JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET said: 'What "finishes" a picture is not the quantity of details, it is the truth of the whole. No matter what the subject may be, there is always a principal object upon which your eye rests continually; the other objects are but complementary, they interest you less; beyond them, there is nothing for your eye: this is the true limit of the picture. This principal object must also chiefly strike those who look at your work. You must therefore come back to it again and again and assert its colour more and more.' He quoted the example of Rembrandt. 'If on the contrary your picture contains exquisite detail, equal from one end of the canvas to the other, the spectator will look at it with indifference. Everything interesting him alike, nothing will interest him. There will be no limit. Your picture may prolong itself indefinitely; you will never reach the end of it. You will never have finished. The whole is the only thing that is finished in a picture. Strictly speaking you might do without colour, but you can do nothing without harmony.'"

There are so many points of resemblance between some passages of this fine painting 171