Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/112

 270 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS family, life was as difficult for them as for him. But before yielding he would make one more trial, painting something from his own fancy. He made a small picture representing " Charity " — a sad-faced woman cherishing three children in her arms. He carried it to the dealers : not one of them would buy it He came back to Marolles. " Give me a subject," he said, "and I will paint it." To this time belong the pictures for which Millet has been much criticised by people who did not appreciate his position. Some of them recall Watteau, others Boucher, but they have a charm, a grace of their own ; they are far from being copies of these men. Others were fanciful subjects to which Marolles gave names likely to attract the notice of picture-buyers in search of a subject. But all was in vain. The dealers were obstinate : the public unsympathetic. The highest price that was offered was never above twenty francs, or five dollars. Yet with this in his pocket, Millet deemed himself already on the high road to fort- une, and saw the day not distant when he could paint at his pleasure the rustic subjects, memories of his home, that had always been in his mind. Several times in the course of this hard novitiate, Millet had escaped from Paris for a visit to his own country. At one time he had remained for a year at Cherbourg, where he painted portraits for such small sums as he could get, and here he and one of his sitters, a young girl of Cherbourg, falling in love with one another, were married. The marriage only added, as might have been fore- seen, to Millet's troubles : his wife's health was always delicate ; after her marriage it became worse, and she died four years after in Paris. Not long after her death Millet married again, and this proved a fortunate venture. His wife came with him to Paris, and the struggle with life began anew. The turning-point in the long period of Millers uncertainties and disappointments with himself came in 1849, when the political troubles of the time, and the visit of the cholera, com- bined to drive him and his family from Paris. They took refuge at Barbizon, a small hamlet on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and here, in the place that was to be forever associated with his name and work, Millet passed, with few interruptions, the remaining years of his life. The phrase so often heard to-day, " The Barbizon School," is rather wider than a strict interpretation would warrant, since Millet and Rousseau were the only ones of the group who lived in the village. Corot was not acquainted with Mil- let. Decamps was never in Millet's house except as a rare visitor to his studio. Diaz lived in Paris. Jacque, the painter of sheep, was a friend of Millet, and for a time at least lived at Barbizon in the house where he lodged before he procured a home of his own. The artistic relationship between these artists is slight, ex- cept in the case of Rousseau and Diaz, and even there it is only occasionally to be detected. All these men, with Duprd, Courbet, and Delacroix, were counted heretics in art by the Academy and the official critics, and as Millet was the most marked figure in the group and was greatly admired and respected by all who composed it, it was perhaps natural that they should be considered by the public as disciples of the peasant painter of Barbizon. Here, then, at Barbizon, Millet lived for the remaining twenty-seven years of