In 1849 Millet went to Barbizon. Theodore Rousseau had been there as early as 1833, and had pretty well settled there about 1837 at the same time as Aligny and Diaz.
For some twenty years or more before this time, French painters had felt the need of diving deep into nature and living in intimate communion with her. As late as 1824 Constable could still write: "The French landscape painters study much but only pictures; and they know no more of nature than cab-horses do of meadows. The worst of it is that they generally paint detached objects such as leaves, rocks and stones, so that they only see isolated bits detached from the whole, and neglect the general aspect of nature as well as its different effects." It is precisely that feeling of the "general aspect" of a landscape and of its living and moving "different effects" that the Barbizon masters were about to acquire in all its fulness. Of the
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