Jean-François Millet: Drawn Into the Light : [Exhibition Catalog]

Taken from back cover; Few artists of the nineteenth century created works as subtly evocative, as socially poignant, and as artistically influential as Jean-Francois Millet did. This book examines Millet's technical and creative, focusing his rarely seen pastels, watercolors, and drawings and considering them as independent works of art, as procedural steps towards painting, and as important elements in his finished pictures. Alexandra Murphy and her co-authors explore ways that Millet reinvented his art and reshaped the course of 19th century painting in the process. Through his shift away from the idealized nudes of the academic tradition to nudes in a real world, his confrontation with the physical landscape of work, and his perception of the light and weather conditions that alter landscape, Millet's pastels. watercolors, and drawings had a profound impact on his artistic contemporaries. Counted among his particular admirers were Degas, Seurat, Pissarro, Gauguin,and van Gogh, who described an exhibition of Millet's pastels as "holy ground." In this context, the authors discuss Millet's most famous painting, "The Gleaners," which not only represents a technical and aesthetic achievement but also serves as an essential symbol of the political causes of the time; Millet's peasants have held their place in social history because they are so beautifully drawn that their gestures speak across decades, nations and cultures.