Jean François Millet

Jean François Millet (1814-1875), French genre and landscape painter, born in Gruchy. He studied art in Cherbourg and then, in 1837, he began to study with the French painter Paul Delaroche in Paris. After 12 years in Paris and Normandy (Normandie), Millet joined the Barbizon School of landscape artists. There he painted some of his best-known works of peasants working in the fields. These include The Gleaners (1857) and The Angelus (1857-1859), both in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, and The Sower (1850) and Potato Planters (1862), both in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Although Millet did not intend his work to be regarded as social protest, the subjects he chose led inevitably to such interpretation.