AT Two Artists of the People By Albert Douglas of Washington, D. C. T first thought it may seem far-fetched if not fantastic to claim that Robert Burns and Jean Francois Millet are as artists near akin. But as we look more closely we may come to agree that, while the career and the character of the French painter differed much from those of the Scots poet, yet in the outward circumstances of their lives, in their artistic outlook upon nature and humanity, as well as in the essential message which each as an artist has left us they have much in common. Born under very similar conditions, as sons of small tenant farmers; subjected in childhood and youth to similar influences; growing to manhood through years of toil and self-denial; each seeking in the interest of his art his country's capital; retiring one to Ellisland and Dumfries and the other to Barbizon; dying both in pecuniary distress and comparative obscurity; the fame of each, resting upon much the same popular sentiment and appreciation, has grown through all the passing years. In temperament too the men were in many respects alike; though Millet seems to have had little taste for social or convivial pleasures, and either lacked or restrained the ardent, illy-regulated sexual instinct which has repelled many from Burns, and, as himself deplored:-"laid him low and stained his name." While both men in the home exemplified the ideal, so well expressed by Burns: "To make a happy fireside clime for weans and wife, That's the true pathos and sublime But to attempt to follow this comparison item by item and trait by trait would soon become uninteresting if not fantastic. Rather let us take the life and the artistic career of one of these men, and briefly trace his story and development; trusting that the likeness may, to some extent at least, suggest itself. And, because the incidents of the life and career of Burns are to most of us the more familiar, we will choose the story of Millet. Few of the thousands of tourists who land each year of normal travel at Cherbourg apprehend how near they are to one of the most beautiful, remote and interesting districts of France. The city is at the eastern end of a square peninsular that thrusts itself out into the English Channel, northwesterly from the mainland of France. The district is known as La Manche, the very significant French name for the English Channel; and its rolling downs, grey stone churches, low thatched cottages; its meadows and its orchards, its cattle and sheep, remind one strikingly of Dorset and Devon; and the people are such as those who move in the novels of Eden Phillpotts. Far out at the northwest corner of this district, ten miles west of Cherbourg, is the headland of La Hague, looking out across the narrow sea, The Race of Alderney, towards the Channel Islands. The coast is indeed stern and rockbound. Its granite walls, rising high above the Atlantic and worn by the elements into fantastic shapes, look down upon the spot where the Kearsage destroyed the Alabama in 1864. This part of the peninsular comprises the village-district of Greville, and out among the cliffs, nestling in a glen almost within stone-throw of the sea, is the tiny hamlet of Gruchy; consisting of eight or ten rough, grey stone houses, strung along one street, that runs east and west and is joined by another roadway from the south. In one of these grey houses farthest to the east was born, a century ago, Jean Francois Millet, the peasant painter of France. The place today is much, indeed one may almost say just, as it was one hundred years ago. The same remote, brooding quiet save for the surf at the foot of the adjacent rocks. The same rolling pastures. The same copious spring near the fork of the road, where the village women still wash and beat their linen. The same ancient well with its roof of stone; and the same hard, penurious, peasant life. It is natural for one familiar with the lives of both men, as he stands beside this stone cottage, to compare this scene with the clay "biggin" on the banks of Doon, near the Irish sea, in Ayrshire; and Millet's with the career of the peasantpoet of Scotland. Indeed one biographer of Millet, telling of the associations of his youth, writes:-"In their patriarchal simplicity and Puritan virtue these Norman peasants were like the Scottish Presbyterians,-and in the natural order of things out of this life of plain living and high thinking there sprang the great poem of peasant life which was this painter's message to the world." This might have been written of Burns; for the circumstances of his early years very closely resemble those of Millet. Both were subject to the same pregnant influence of devout parents and patriarchal home life. Both spent much the same sort of laborious youth amid rural scenes in the remote districts where they were born. Rigid economy, toil and responsibility beyond his years brought each to an early maturity. In each was developed deep religious faith and strong independence of spirit; and ultimately, each in his own language forcibly interpreted the dignity of labor, the worth of character and the value of the individual man. To each was revealed the beauty and the artistic value of the common life of fireside and field, of men and women, of bird and beast and flower. One became a poet and the other a painter of humanity; each giving expression to new ideals and to modern ideas in striking and original forms. For twenty years and more Millet lived at Greville and shared the earnest, laborious and religious life of his home and surroundings. He was fortunate, as it has been suggested Burns was fortunate, in his father, mother and the influences of his home. Education, knowledge were for their own sake greatly esteemed, so that, though books were not easy to come by, Millet, like Burns, acquired a somewhat remarkable mental cultivation, read much and thought deeply. His father, Jean Louis Millet, a tall, slight man, had neither the appearance nor the limitations of the average rustic of his time. He was a man of some refinement both in his appearance and tastes; with dark eyes, rather long, brown hair and shapely hands. He too had a fine voice, was fond of music and trained the village choir of Greville until it became noted in the neighborhood and people came from all the vicinity to hear it sing, in the low stone church which his son was to immortalize in one of the last of his paintings, and before which the son's statute now stands. He also modelled in clay, carved wood and loved and studied, and taught this eldest son to see and note the trees, birds, plants and scenes of nature about him. His mother, though a hard working woman in house and field, was one who possessed some education and was noted for her neat and cleanly appearance. Then too his grandmother, who made her eldest grandson her special property and took care of him while his parents worked in the field or tended their sheep and cattle, taught him much, as Burns' maternal aunt taught him, of the wisdom, sayings and songs of the countryside. So Millet grew to manhood amidst scenes and under influences which imparted to him the important truth which he afterwards in a letter thus expressed: "It is essential to use the commonplace in order to express the sublime." And as we read these words how many of the lines of Burns come to mind; some as familiar as these: "But mousie thou are not thy lane In proving foresight may be vain, An lea' us nought but grief an pain And what more offensively "commonplace" than a louse! But one seen upon a Sunday bonnet gave us that "sublime" sermon in little: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us and ev'n devotion." As Millet approached manhood it was his father who appreciated his artistic temperament and capacity; encouraged him to draw, praised his sketches of the men and women and the scenes that attracted the boy's pencil; and finally took him to Cherbourg to see old Mouchel, an artist there. They took with them two of the sketches and found it difficult to persuade Mouchel that the boy, unaided and untaught, had made them. So this artist kept Millet by him for six months, encouraged him to draw whatever he felt tempted to portray; and to study the pictures in the small public gallery at Cherbourg. Then the boy's father died and, as the oldest son, he had to go home and, as did Burns, in a measure take charge of the family, the grandmother and the mother and the seven brothers and sisters, as well as of the little farm. But his work at Cherbourg had attracted the attention of some men of influence and the Mayor wrote him urging him to return to the city and pursue his artistic studies. This his grandmother determined should be accomplished and so finally it was, and he went into the studio of the principal painter of the town, Langlois, who had studied in Paris and in Italy. He like Mouchel recognized Millet's talent at once, and after some months addressed a petition, in behalf of young Millet, to the town council of Cherbourg, which resulted after some delays in an arrangement between the city and the district, by which six hundred francs a year was promised to Millet for his support while he studied his art in Paris, So at the age of twenty-two Millet began the second period of his life. For twelve years he lived, studied and suffered in Paris. At the end of two or three years he was called home and lived some months there and in Cherbourg; trying, often in the most humble way, to make a living with his brush. In Cherbourg he now married a slight, little dressmaker, whose portrait he had painted for a few francs. With her he returned to his life of privation in Paris. Only the first installment of six hundred francs was paid him by the authorities of Cherbourg. The second year the sum dwindled to three hundred and then ceased altogether; so that the young artist was thrown upon his own resources for a living for himself and his young wife; whose frail constitution gave way until she died. Millet found Paris and his life there and most of the artistic development of the time and place thoroughly distasteful. The Salon and the Beaux-Arts were dominated by artificial and conventional ideals. Millet, moved indeed, dominated by an almost passionate sincerity and the impulse to seek for essential truth, was filled with distaste for the classical conventions and theatrical display of the painters who for the time represented such artistic taste as found official and public expression in Paris. On another visit home he had married a young peasant girl, Catherine Lemaire, and as children came to them fast, he was compelled to struggle, at times desperately, for the barest necessities of life. The work which he was compelled to do, and in doing which he gradually obtained some renown, was work of necessity rather than of his choice. He painted much in the nude and did work both in paint and pastel of a mythological and classical sort such as he or his friends could sell at some price to the dealers. Though Millet was essentially a countryfied young man, shy in disposition, hesitating in speech and awkward in manner, he had a personality that was in many respects attractive, and a fine depth of character that had but to be known to be admired; so that in the atelier of Delaroche and among the artists of Paris he made warm friends, and kept them; but, in the language of Robert Louis Stevenson, "without capitulation." Among these was the Spanish painter Dias, who afterwards befriended him much, and Rousseau, and Jacque, and finally during the latter years of his stay in |