Page:How to show pictures to children (IA howtoshowpictur00hurl).pdf/172

 woman saying grace over her frugal meal, or working at her spinning-wheel. With Terburg we get a glimpse of fashionable life, peeping into the homes of the wealthy, where slender ladies, in satin gowns, are completing their toilets, playing on musical instruments, or engaged in polite conversation. A French genre painter of the eighteenth century, whose domestic subjects are closely akin to those of the Dutch school, was Chardin. There is, however, a delicacy and sentiment about his work which distinguishes it from the Dutch. Even his cooks and housekeepers, with their coquettish frilled caps, have a vein of the poetic in their make-up.

It is because the occupations of daily life appeal so strongly to children that Millet is a great favorite with them. They are much interested in the simple French peasant-folk pursuing their common tasks in the house and field. The sense of strength and efficiency in these figures is an important element in their attractiveness, and there is usually a placid content in labor which is good to see. They take their tasks seriously, almost solemnly sometimes, as if performing a religious rite. The Potato Planters (man and woman), the Sheep-shearer, the Sower, and the Gleaners illustrate these qualities. The Angelus, the best-known, but by no means the greatest, of Millet’s works, represents a man and woman in the field at the close of the day’s labor, bowing in prayer at the sound of the Angelus bell. When the laborers lack facial beauty, their pose is as majestic as Greek sculpture. The Man with the Hoe, notwithstanding his stupid vacant