JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
great pastures, vast plains asleep in the last hours of the day, or at night under the cold rays of the moon when the damp vapour of the meadow and the warm exhalations rising from the flock float in the air. Thus his selection of this figure of the Shepherd naturally drew him to give a greater place in his work to the landscape which he had hitherto sacrificed to the persons.
In 1857 appeared The Gleaners, those three never to be forgotten figures bowed over the earth which they seem to probe with their nails in the eagerness of their hunt for the forgotten ears. Shrieks of indignation were raised against them by the critics. Millet's former defenders, Paul de St Victor among them, turned against him. "These are scare-crows set up in a field," he wrote. "M. Millet seems to think that poor execution suits pictures of poverty; his ugliness has no accentuation, his vulgarity no relief." People refused to see in the picture anything but a political work, an indictment against the poverty of the masses. Edmond About was almost the only person who understood the "austere simplicity" of the work. It found
92
