whose beautiful book was to preserve for us so faithful and pious an image of him. Children had been born to him. His indigence was extreme; his wife and he concealed it with dignity. But life in Paris became more and more burdensome to him; he liked no part of it; he remained indifferent and an alien, in the bottom of his heart hostile to the artistic, literary and philosophic movement and the political agitations that eventually brought about the Revolution of 1848.
The Revolution, however, was not useless to him. When it broke out Millet was at the end of his resources and was seriously ill. The Salon of 1848 was opened freely to everybody; the Republic had abolished the hanging committee. Millet who for some time past had been trying his hand at painting national types, mechanics, quarrymen, navvies, the poverty-stricken beggars, etc., exhibited his first great picture of the people's life—The Winnower.[1] This marks a date in French art
- ↑ Millet sent a Babylonish Captivity to the Salon at the same time, the canvas of which he afterwards made use of (as he had done with the St Jerome) for the Woman Sheep-Shearing.
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