I.

WAS at work under Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts in the winter of 1872-73. On the Rue Buonaparte, near the school, was an old print-shop, and in the windows were engravings ancient and modern. Among them I noted most frequently some woodcuts after Millet's drawings -one series," Morning," " Noon," "Evening," and "Night"; the other, eight or ten drawings of figures at work, "Reaping," "Mowing," "Chopping," "Spinning," etc. I was never tired looking at these, and never got by the shop without stopping to see at least the man mowing the naturalness of the swing of his body, his foot so firmly planted upon the earth. This was my first acquaintance with Millet, although in America I had seen a lithograph of his "Women Sewing," which seemed like Frère to me, but larger and more robust. Some Americans of the Latin Quarter went down to Barbizon in the winter for a few days of recreation. When they came back they told me that Barbizon was on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, that Millet lived there near the hotel, and that his studio window looked out on to the street.

On hearing this I was very sorry that I had not gone down with the party, but resolved that in the spring I would see Barbizon, the forest, and at least the outside of Millet's house. I saw one or two landscapes by Millet at Durand-Rouel's, which did not impress me strongly at the time; but I became familiar with the works of Delacroix, Corot, Rousseau, Diaz, and Jules Dupré, and my sympathies at once became concentrated upon these masters. Later in the spring, at an exhibition at the Hôtel Drouot, where all of these men and other strong ones were represented in force (I remember how thin and pale a Meissonier looked), I saw a painting by Millet-a mother sewing by an oil lamp, her baby asleep beside her. The reality of this scene, the naturalness of movement, the perfection of expression, the charm, separated it from all other pictures, and from that moment Millet was to me the greatest of modern painters.

I went down to Barbizon in the early summer. I found the hotel jolly, the forest grand, and Millet's large studio window always in view.

The village was so small, with but one narrow street, that I felt the chances strongly in favor of my meeting Millet, and possibly of making his acquaintance. So, with one or two sketches in the forest, I went back to Paris to make one more study in the class, and to pack my traps and lay in a stock of material for the summer.

I worked hard and saw a great deal of Millet's house and studio from the street and the field behind, where a road ran through going into the forest. There was never an evening that I did not go out for a walk, and whichever direction I took I always found that my road was by Millet's house in going and that I came back by the same way. Millet's studio was a detached building, separated from the house by a yard; the house, like the studio, was built on the line of the wall on the side of the road. The dining-room window opened into the street, and I sometimes got a glimpse of the family as they sat at their evening meala cheerful, noisy lot of young people; and at the table, later in the evening, I once saw Millet's face distinctly in profile: the nose seemed very long, and I thought he looked like the portrait of Titian. No one at that time could have persuaded me that I should ever sit in that cheerful home and talk with Millet. I found that very little was seen of him in the village. I met a number of artists who had lived for a long time at Barbizon, but none of them seemed to know him. "Siron's," the inn, was the general resort for the artist inhabitants of the place, and they, together with the boarders, made a noisy crowd in the billiard and dining rooms in the evening or on a rainy afternoon; but Millet never came round to drink a glass of beer or to play a game of billiards. So the artists called him a bear, and had doubts of his ability to paint; but the peasant people found in him a good neighbor nevertheless, and if any one was in trouble Madame Millet was the first person thought of in the way of aid.

By good fortune I became acquainted with Mr. William Babcock of Boston, who had lived abroad for many years, and at that time had become fixed at Barbizon. His house was filled with engravings, photographs, or casts of nearly all the finest things that had been produced in art, and in him I found a man responding in every thought to the beauties of the treasures of art and nature about him. He

had taken some lessons from Millet many years before in Paris, and always had seen a good deal of him, and his enthusiasm for Millet and Millet's work was without bounds. He had bought from Millet at different times a number of drawings and sketches, some of them of great beauty and rare finish. He also had hanging about his studio several studies in oil and some finished paintings by Millet, also several by Delacroix and Diaz. All these he had bought for small sums, saved from a limited income, while studying in the schools of Paris. Thus while in the country painting from nature I was able to increase my knowledge of ancient art and of the best modern masters. Babcock had carefully preserved photographs of everything of Millet's that had been reproduced. With these, the drawings, and Babcock's descriptions I became acquainted more fully with Millet's art and its history. I found to be true what I had felt from the first, that Millet was one man in a century; that his love and sympathy for nature were unbounded. I had suffered much pain in finding- I imagined it so at least-that but few artists really loved nature. They seemed to care only for that which it suited them to paint; but in Millet I had found a man who adored the stars, the moon, and the sun, the earth, the air, and everything that the sun shone upon. And through this love everything that he touched, frequently the least things of the earth, became monuments. I felt it a privilege to live so near this man.

Thus I passed the summer with much hard and pleasant work and with many plans and schemes for a visit to Millet, but always abandoning them as soon as made. Finally the nearness for the time of my return for the reopening of the schools in Paris gave me a new courage. So one Sunday, judging carefully the probable hour that the Millet family would have finished their noonday meal, I tapped at the door and asked for François, the eldest son, with whom I had made a bowing acquaintance through occasional meetings in the fields or the woods. I asked him for his father's permission to visit his studio; also the privilege of calling upon him at his own studio. The last request he at once granted, and going to his father brought word that he would see me in half an hour. This time I spent in trembling and happy expectancy, returning at the time fixed. Millet gave me a friendly shake of the hand and showed me through the door of his sacred workroom.

Everything was plain and gray. An old green curtain hung across the lower part of the window, which is not unusual in a studio, but two features seemed to me to belong distinctively to this. The window was at the left on entering the room; at the farther end, beyond

the easel, was a large mirror, which I imagined was used by Millet to study a movement which he would give himself, or a detail of folds from his own clothing. I am warranted in this from his having used this mirror in calling my attention to certain facts of form and detail upon his own body while criticizing, upon another day, some drawings that I had brought him.

The other object which struck me was a curtain suspended from the nearer side of the window and hanging at right angles with it. Behind this Millet would retire to look at his work or to show it to visitors, the curtain intercepting the light, and making the picture seen with greater ease.

The walls were of plaster, darkened by time; heavy rafters crossed the ceiling; a few plaster casts hung about the walls-reliefs from the Trajan Column, heads by Donatello and Luca della Robbia, the arm of Michael Angelo's "Slave," some small Gothic figures and antique torsos, besides some Gothic figures carved in wood, of which Millet was very fond. All the studio accessories or decorations were so unobtrusive that I did not see any of them on my first visit. No pictures were in sight. A large frame hanging over the already mentioned mirror, which I afterwards found to contain a rather highly colored seventeenth-century master, was covered with a quiet drapery, but the end and right-hand side walls were closely stacked with canvases and with frames for temporary use containing canvases, all standing on the floor, their faces turned to the wall. Immediately upon entering the studio Millet took one of these, and, placing it upon the easel in the middle of the room, signaled me to stand with him behind the curtain, which placed us at a considerable distance from the picture. He put before me in this way ten or a dozen pictures, generally in frames, and in an advanced state of completion, always returning the picture to its place in its stack against the wall. As I have said, up to this time I had seen but few of Millet's completed paintings: therefore the full force of his power and greatness was revealed to me then, and in his presence words were certainly of little value in expressing my feelings. But the master was evidently satisfied and pleased with my rapt wonder and admiration, and seemed to approve of my difficultly worded comments. He insisted that the pictures should be seen at a considerable distance, say at four or five times their greatest width or height, but called me near sometimes that I might see the simplicity of execution or the few touches required in producing multiplicity and infinity in effect.

A comment by Millet which impressed me strongly was this: he wished in a landscape to give the feeling that you are looking at a piece

of nature that the mind shall be carried on and outside its limits to that which is lying to the right and left of the picture, beyond the horizon, and to bring the foreground still nearer, surrounding the spectator with the vegetation or growth belonging to that place. He showed me a canvas with the "Two Spaders" in heavy ink outline. In reply to some remarks, I think, he showed me the large reed pen with which he had drawn it. Several of the pictures showed this same ink outline underneath, notably "The Cowherd," which, although complete in its effectiveness as a picture, was painted very thinly in transparent colors-opaque tones being used only in the sky and in one or two of the cows in the foreground. This was undoubtedly the work of a single day, or of a few hours, after the picture had been drawn in outline.

Another picture in an early stage was the "Women returning with Fagots." This was more simply painted, the whole picture having been put in with three or four tones; the effect was nevertheless very complete and impressive - much more so than the pastel of the same subject. The climax of Millet's power which was revealed to me that day was a still-life study -three pears lying on a plate or table. I felt that I was looking at a picture of no less interest than his larger and more complicated compositions. In the pears I found all the tones of a landscape, in the twisted stems I seemed to see the weather-worn tree, and the modeling of the fruit was studied and rendered with the same interest that he would have given to a hill or a mountain or to the human body. At the same time it was none the less a most faithful presentation of three pears. Millet seemed well pleased in my declaring this to be equal in interest to his other pictures. I now more fully understood his aims in art, and this little still-life was certainly one of his triumphs. Did he not write, "One must be able to make use of the trivial for the expression of the sublime"? And on his death-bed, while looking out into his garden and at his closed studio door, longing like a young man for more opportunities for work, he described to his son, not colossal canvases and multitudes of figures, but a quiet nook in his native Normandy-the side of a hill, a road, and a few trees. Could he but live he had so much that he would still say; he would show what could be done with this simple material.

Millet testified a rare friendliness in talking to me without reserve of himself, of his loneliness and isolation. This conversation was interrupted by the entrance of a friend who was spending the day at the house. I then asked Millet some questions relating to my studies of art —was anatomy necessary or worth while?

Yes, all study was useful; but the larger constructions, the planes and surfaces, must ever be kept in mind. I questioned him about" values," and of thin and solid painting. He treated the subject of values in a way so much larger and more general than we, students of the school of the day, understood, that he was soon beyond my reach. In regard to heavy painting I told him of a picture of his which I had recently seen in Paris, "Edipus being taken from the Tree," in which the child's face was actually modeled in relief with the pigments. He laughed heartily, and replied that he was very young when he painted it." Millet was always impatient of detail or particularity in methods. He once said that much must be learned and forgotten before the painter could really be at the command of his own powers.

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I had been discussing the question of the beautiful in nature, and before leaving Millet I asked him, although I knew well his answer, if anything in nature was not beautiful; but his reply came with a directness and force that satisfied me beyond my expectations: "The man who finds any phase or effect in nature not beautiful, the lack is in his own heart." I had been so cordially entertained that in leaving I had no feeling of having staid too long or of having intruded upon the master's precious time. Millet readily granted me permission to bring him my work for criticism. I then went across the field to the studio of the son, where I found upon his easel a harvest field—a mower sitting in the road and sharpening his scythe in a manner common to the laborers of that country. The painting was much in the method and spirit of the father's art, having not a little of his opulence and charm of color. I then thought, and time has confirmed my belief, that when the same justice has been given the son that at so late an hour was accorded the father he will be hailed as the great pupil of and co-worker with Millet, and the question of whether the work was executed by father or by son will be of diminished importance.

History furnishes us with plenty of such instances. We no longer complain that Andrea had not the individuality and was not so original in his art creations as Luca della Robbia.

After a little time Millet came in, looked at the picture, and gave a few words of criticism and approval. This unexpected visit gave me a new opportunity to ply fresh questions,Millet talked much of nature and of art,—but my mind was already filled to overflowing, and I never could recall this hour or two of invaluable words from the master.

I remember well the effect produced upon me by this rare afternoon. I needed air and motion to quiet my nerves; I seemed not to

touch the ground as I walked. I could almost affirm at this distant day that the air was buoyant, and that it carried me along without effort on my part. I was in a new atmosphere, a new world; never before had I felt the plain to stretch off into such distances, such vividness and mellowness of color, such depth in the sky. I saw Millet again before my return to Paris, and showed him a few studies and pictures. He found in my work a lack of simplicity, too much of unnecessary detail, the "planes" not well felt, and a smallness in the attachments of the limbs to the body. He made some outlines to explain his remarks that had the simplicity of the early Egyptian or Assyrian carvings. His criticisms upon the more technical points VOL. XXXVIII.-13.

were much the same as those of Gérôme and Munkacsy given me upon some of the same things. This served to convince me, even at this early day, that in technicality there were larger principles which govern all good art.

I returned to Barbizon again in the winter, and remained several weeks to finish a picture begun in the autumn. François Millet and I were much together, and I sometimes took coffee with the family in the evening. At these times Millet sat at the table like a patriarch, as he has so often been described, surrounded by his large and handsome family, his manner always cordial and full of hospitality.

In the spring I saw him in Paris; he had come with Madame Millet and François for