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 one to be called by most disagreeable names. I only speak of them to you because I know that you suffer from the same infirmities"

It was in these surroundings that Millet spent the greater part of his life. Its principal episodes are his works and the continually recurring struggles with poverty.

In 1850 Millet sent The Sower and The Binders of Hay to the Salon. We have already spoken of the revolutionary allusions attributed by critics to the figure of the sower, that wild-looking young man in the red jacket and blue trousers, casting the seed, broadcast, with a violent action, amid the clouds of rooks that are sweeping down upon the field. The picture made some stir, although Corot was attracting the chief attention that year by his Funeral at Ornans. At the same period Millet painted Peasants going to work in the fields; a Woman beating Hemp; Wood Gatherers in the forest; a Virgin for the signboard of a fancy