Jean-François MILLET (1814-1875 - Lot 65

Jean-François MILLET (1814-1875 )Recto: A peasant resting on his spade in his fieldVerso : Studies of naked women, arms and legs for the pastel of the BathersPastel and black pencil. Signed "J.F. Millet" on the lower right . 37.5 x 47 cmProvenance : Jean-Albert Dethomas (1842-1891), father of the artist Maxime Dethomas, then by descent. Related works: - The Digger at Rest, engraving circa 1855, Delteil 3. A preparatory sketch in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. - Man resting on his spade, ca. 1850 (oil on canvas, 41.2 x 33.6 cm), in a private collection in Japan. - Le Bêcheur au repos, wood, 1874, engraved by his brother Pierre from a drawing provided by the artist. The drawing passed at the Triton Collection Fondation sale, Christie's, Paris, March 25, 2015, (25.4 x 20 cm), no. 39. This splendid unpublished pastel is to be compared with the etching of The Fisherman at Rest engraved by Pierre Millet after his brother Jean-François Millet in 1874, as well as with the set of preparatory works for the pastel and oil of The Two Fishermen (between 1855 and 1866) (see the exhibition catalog Millet , Paris, 1975, Éditions RMN, pp.159-166). We can see that the position of the head and the angle of the handle of the spade have been altered. Millet places his character in perspective in the immensity of a plain, perhaps that of Chailly, with in the distance a hamlet in a grove towards which the lines of force converge. The naturalism and radicalism of the subject-a lone man in an infinite expanse-recalls Man with a Hoe (Los Angeles, Getty Museum) (see exhibition catalog "Millet," 2017, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, 2017-2018, pp. 66-67, reproduced). "In plowed places, though sometimes in certain unplowable countries, you see figures hoeing, digging," writes Millet. "You see one from time to time straightening his back, as they say, and wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. "You will eat your bread by the sweat of your brow". Is this the cheerful, playful work that some people would have us believe? It is however there that I find the true humanity, the great poetry. (see Alfred Sensier, La Vie et l'œuvre de Jean-François Millet, Paris, 1881, p. 130; cited in Millet/Van Gogh, Paris, Musée d'Orsay, 1998-1999,p. 144). Beginning in 1865, Emile Gavet began to buy pastels from Jean-François Millet. He paid him well for them, and "this technique responded so well to Millet's instinctive taste for drawing that he sacrificed oil painting to it." (see Robert L . Herbert, catalog of the exhibition Jean-François Millet, Paris, 1975-1976, p. 189). At the beginning he kept an important use of black pencil for outlines, but very soon he drew with color, abolishing as a precursor of Van Gogh the distinction between drawing and coloring. Almost all the subjects treated by Millet in his maturity are themes borrowed from his youthful works. The work on the fishermen of 1855-56 is taken up here, probably a decade later. The studies of nude women on the reverse are preparatory for the pastel "Bathers" in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille (opus cited above, no. 42, p. 78, reproduced). The drawing comes from the collection of Jean-Albert Dethomas, a lawyer at the Court of Appeal of Paris and art lover. Since 1865 he has owned the superb pastel of the "Sower" (Williamstown, Clark Art Institute), according to a letter from Alfred Sensier to Mr. Dethomas, preserved in the family. Jean-Albert Dethomas exchanged a few letters with Alfred Sensier, Millet's friend and biographer, about the Sower. The family also keeps a letter from the Committee for the erection of a monument to J.F. Millet dated April 26, 188(...), in which he is thanked for the loan to the Millet exhibition (at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1887) of several works by the Master that he owns. It is possible that this pastel was shown there, even if the printed catalog of the exhibition does not mention it.