JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
time with me. I wish it very much too; but it seems you have none too much money; how do you manage to live? My poor child, when the thought of that comes over me, I am very uneasy. Ah, I hope you will come and take us by surprise just when we are least looking for you; as for me, I don't know either how to live or to die, I want to see you again so much." The poor woman was to die, in 1853, without seeing him again. We may imagine what these years of anguish and mourning were to Millet.
In 1853 Millet was awarded a second-class medal at the Salon; he had sent three pictures: The Reapers' Meal, or Ruth and Boaz; The Shepherd and the Woman shearing Sheep. The antique majesty of their realism struck the critics, especially Théophile Gautier and Paul de St Victor. But Millet was not satisfied. He had not yet found his true style.
From this time onward his work began to have a singular attraction for the English and American colony at Paris and Barbizon. It was among its members that he, like Rousseau, then found most sympathisers. Especially noteworthy were W. Morris Hunt of Boston,
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