WHAT? Millet – Life on the Land

WHERE? The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN

WHEN? Now until 19 October. Free to view.

WHY GO? For an elevated story of country folk. French artist Millet is famed for his representation of life on the land—and did indeed originate from a farming family.
Never forgetting his background, Millet devoted his life’s work to portraying the social injustices inflicted upon peasants in poor rural communities. Images of roughly clad country folk labouring on the land became his signature, and led to the informal Barbizon school of landscape artists. This movement embraced realism during a period when other painters romanticised art. Named after the French village of Barbizon, it included Rousseau and Virgilio Díaz, but Millet was the leading light, and his work was greatly admired by Van Gogh, Monet, and—most famously—Salvador Dalí.
This small free exhibition coincides with the 150th anniversary of Millet’s death and captures the raw emotion of his work. His most famous painting, L’Angelus, on loan from the Musée d’Orsay, focuses on a man and woman reciting the Angelus prayer after labouring on the land. The quiet dignity of this atmospheric image is a picture worth a thousand words—and secured Millet’s image as the artist who immortalised the humble lives of ordinary country folk.

IN THE KNOW Surrealist Dalí was an obsessive Millet fan. Consumed by his theory that L’Angelus really portrayed a grieving couple mourning a lost child, he persuaded the Louvre to X-ray the painting to reveal whether a faded coffin image lay hidden beneath! His theory remains a Daliesque myth.