WOMAN IN ART
The experience of poverty, and an unspoiled heart, furnished his equipment for picturing the simple life of the people of his native Normandy, and this he did with inimitable freedom of air and action. He was the first to see a picturesque element in the humble domestic activities of the country folk. He was but a youth when he sketched "Ma Mere et les Poulet;" an every-day scene that speaks of naturalness, and the influence of the cottage mother and grandmother on the boy, who was to illuminate the art and life of France, and make the heart of the world responsive to human sympathy. The sketch was painted to suggest a memory to him, and to many another who has had the good fortune to know life from the ground up. As "ma mere" scatters feed for the chickens, the baby from the doorstep expresses his delight in the feathered portion of the family. Boy and man, Millet always loved that familiar scene, The loving and dutiful mother and grandmother were daily-life saints to him, and in later years his sympathy for women of the bent back led to his painting "The Gleaners." Yonder the harvest is stacked at the outskirt of the village, recalling that from the days of the Hebrew Ruth the poor have been gleaners after harvest.
Another peasant woman Millet has given to the world. She is tired with household duties before she goes afield; the pathetic element mingles with and dulls the spirit and the scene, and so has the sympathizer with woman's work painted a mother with her water jug on her shoulder starting afield. Her day's work will thrash out an apronful of wheat for the family supply.
Here we are reminded of lines of an American poet:
"Blessed are they that work
For they shall inherit the earth
In the dawning day."
But alas! many have folded the weary hands before the dawn of the new day; but their inheritance will multiply to their children's children.
Another picture—a world picture—"The Angelus" sounded the religious note in modern art. As a unit "The Angelus" sounded the Renaissance of our modern art.
The expression of soul in its sincerity and devotion as the man and woman pause work, in response to the distant bell calling to evening prayer, was an oasis in the field of art and in the eagerness of the nineteenth century; it rang true to the religious instinct in men who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
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