Jean‐François Millet 1814–1875
NG 6447 
The Winnower

Sarah Herring, 2019

Extracted from:
Sarah Herring, The Nineteenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2019).

About 1847–8

Oil on canvas, 100 × 70.3 cm

Signed bottom left: J.F. Millet

Support

The stretcher is not original and the original canvas is lined with two canvases. The size corresponds approximately (although 2 cm wider) to a no. 40 paysage canvas.

There is cusping present on all four edges, most prominently on the top and bottom edges. At the bottom edge the original tacking edge has been flattened out to increase the dimensions of the original canvas by up to 2.5 cm. This must have been carried out by Millet himself, as the painting’s present dimensions fit those of its original frame in which it was shown at the Salon. A line visible in the paint surface running roughly parallel to the bottom edge probably represents a ground or paint layer from the earlier composition (for which see below). By the time the painting was lined, this edge was very damaged. What is now visible at the bottom edge is lining canvas (up to 2 cm) overlaid with paint by a later hand.

The X‐radiograph (fig. 1) shows figurative elements, apparently unrelated to the present composition, which can be read in three ways. The first reading is a naked left leg, seen frontally, running from centre to bottom right, foot braced against the lower right edge of the composition (anatomically, however, this foot does not fit with the leg); a naked right leg, considerably foreshortened, points towards the lower left corner with the foot raised rather than flat on the floor, which could be said to bear some relation to the first leg. The second leg is only partly completed, and in the upper part is sketched in outline only. There is also a curious feature at the bottom, which includes what looks like a thumb or elongated toe. A forearm, bare wrist and clenched left hand (which appear to be larger‐scale than the leg) rises vertically from the winnower’s head. There are a cluster of dashes of paint (possibly thrown [page 390] seed) in the upper left corner, and various unexplained passages of paint, for example two blocks in the lower centre, possibly representing stone or rock, and some rounded small details just behind the winnower. To the right of his head and body are broad expanses of freely brushed paint and a sword‐like shape running diagonally across his right forearm.

The second reading is that the limb running from centre to bottom right is an arm that corresponds to the other arm with clenched fist; both are painted in the same scale. In order to view this, the picture has to be turned on its side, with the right edge along the bottom, and the format becomes horizontal.¹ This interpretation becomes more difficult to sustain if the block shape to the right in the vertical format (which is painted with lead white) is understood to be drapery; the brushstrokes can be compared to the portrayal of linen with a series of broad strokes in Millet’s tiny After the Bath of 1846–8 (private collection).² On the other hand, this could also be random paint, unrelated to the original composition but certainly related to the two other light passages visible to the bottom of the picture in the X‐radiograph.

Both these readings assume that the canvas is either an académie, which was subsequently painted over, or the beginnings of a composition yet to be identified. The pose of the splayed legs (if that is what they are), one with heel lifted off the ground, and the raised arm with clenched hand, does bear some relation to the figure (but seen from the back) on the extreme left of Millet’s early compositional oil sketch The Stoning of Saint Stephen (fig. 2), raising his clenched hand ready to throw his stone.³

A third reading is that the canvas was originally painted with a series of random studies, unrelated to each other. The limb at the right can be read as either an arm or (perhaps more probably) as a leg; it is harder to relate the third limb on the left, which is poorly resolved. The distinctive clenched fist can be related to other académies showing a similar gesture, such as François‐Nicolas‐Auguste Feyen‐Perrin’s (1826–1888), Painted Figure (fig. 3).⁴ If it is an académie, both of the first two readings also assume an active pose, either with the legs outstretched (and indeed with only one foot flat on the floor) and arm raised, or with the arms flung out to the side, which would have been difficult for a model to hold for a long period, particularly as the clenched fist does not appear to be holding a support of ring or bar. In Feyen‐Perrin’s study the model, while not holding on to anything with his raised hand, does support his pose with the other on a pile of boxes. An académie of 1837–8 by Millet himself (fig. 4) shows a model standing with his legs wide apart, rather as in the X‐radiograph, but without the tension in the limbs and with both feet on the floor.⁵

On his arrival in Paris in 1837 Millet trained in the studio of Paul Delaroche (1797–1856) at the Ecole des Beaux‐Arts, from where he entered for the Prix de Rome in 1839. The subject of the first round, in which he was successful, was Saint John preaching in the Desert. Millet subsequently left Delaroche’s studio and worked at the Atelier Suisse, a studio run by Charles Suisse where models were put at the disposal of students and artists, but where no formal teaching was offered. At either of these two studios Millet would have painted a number of académies. While it is not inconceivable that the limbs were painted on the present canvas by another hand, it is most likely that they were studies by Millet himself.⁶ At this period economic constraints forced him to reuse his own canvases, as remarked by Sensier: ‘From 1842 to 1844, Millet works without ado in his little lodging at number 5 rue Princesse. He paints a lot, he destroys and repaints with other subjects on the canvases’.⁷ When in 1846 his submission to the Paris Salon, Saint Jerome tempted, was rejected, he cut the canvas up, using the upper part for Oedipus Cut Down from the Tree (Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada) in 1847.⁸ A fragment of the lower half, which is painted with Still Life with a Skull, is in a private collection.⁹ Oedipus was hung at the Salon of 1847, where critics were astounded by the thickness of the paint, partly a result of painting on top of another composition. Their criticisms of The Winnower were similar when it appeared in 1848. Gautier, for example, used the same expression for both paintings: on Oedipus he writes of ‘truellage de couleurs’ (trowelling‐on of colours) and ‘an unbelievable audacity and fury, through a paint as thick as if it came from a mortar, on a rough and grainy canvas, with brushes bigger than a thumb, and covered with frightful shadows’.¹⁰ Of The Winnower he writes: M. Millet’s painting has everything it takes to horrify the bourgeois; the bourgeois with the smooth chops, as Petrus Borel the Lycanthrope called them. He trowels on to his dishcloth canvas, using no oil or turps, great masonries of colour, paint so dry no varnish could quench its thirst. Nothing could be more rugged, ferocious, bristling and crude.¹¹ Gautier concludes with advice to reduce by a few centimetres the depth of his impasto; thus Millet would remain a ‘robust and warm colourist’ but would be more comprehensible. A.‐J. Dupays also notes the degree of impasto: ‘There is a laborious method of impasto which is more profitable to the colour merchant than to the artist’; he also compares the matte surface to wax painting.¹²

Materials and Technique

The original canvas has been prepared with an off‐white ground composed of lead white with traces of yellow earth and black. The ground is visible at the right edge, but is completely covered elsewhere. An opaque brown layer present in some areas does not cover the whole canvas. While this is only a partial layer, it can possibly be related to the brown primings applied by Millet in other reused canvases.¹³

The palette is principally made up of earth pigments, including a particularly transparent red earth and a range of yellow earths. The following pigments have also been identified: lead white, ivory black, charcoal black, Prussian blue, and small amounts of a pale cobalt blue and emerald green.

The dark brown paint in the top left‐hand corner (where the ‘corn’ or ‘seed’ is visible in the X‐radiograph) has an underlayer of lead white containing large semi‐translucent lead‐containing inclusions. Many of these have been identified as lead soaps which have formed between a lead‐containing pigment and the paint medium. Since some of the inclusions have a yellow appearance and are associated with lead and chlorine, it has been proposed that possibly an unusual yellow pigment, Patent yellow (also known as Turner’s yellow or jaune minérale) has been used here.¹⁴ This pale underlayer most likely relates to the earlier compositional elements visible in this area of the X‐radiograph, and can be seen as thick touches of impasto on the picture surface below the final brown paint layer. The dark brown background paint contains black, red earth (both transparent and opaque) and transparent orange earth particles among others in a yellow/brown matrix. In the area of the painted‐over fist (visible in the X‐radiograph) the white ground layer is followed by several layers of wet‐in‐wet paint, with a possible intermediate layer of varnish. The overlying composition is made up of an opaque brown paint followed by a darker greenish‐brown seen on the surface of the final composition. The greenish‐blue material covering the winnower’s knees is rendered in a semi‐transparent blue‐green mixture of lead white, yellow earth and Prussian blue with a little fine red earth and black.¹⁵

The paint layers have been disrupted by the effects of heat (for which see below) in the area where the X‐radiograph shows the clenched fist. When examined under the microscope, a warm orange/red paint is visible through the cracks in the upper layer, occasionally speckled with a near‐white colour. Where the X‐radiograph shows a diamond‐shape at lower left, again some warm orange/red paint is visible through the cracks in the upper surface. This is also visible at the lower right, where the X‐radiograph shows the presence of the diagonally positioned arm or leg.¹⁶

Analysis of the binding media from a brown and yellow paint passage in the foreground revealed the use of heat‐bodied walnut oil in both cases.

Conservation and Condition

NG 6447 was wax‐lined, cleaned and restored before acquisition, presumably in the early 1970s. The X‐radiograph shows old tears and losses, the most serious being at the lower right, lower centre and left centre of picture. There are scattered smaller losses elsewhere. The surface is pitted, slightly melted and crushed, as if by heat. This is probably the effect of the hot wax lining but could perhaps have been the effects of a fire. In the nineteenth century it was suggested that the painting had been destroyed by the Boston fire of [page 393] 1872. This aspect of its condition could suggest that it was caught up in the fire, but rescued before it was burnt.

There is significant craquelure, both sharp mechanical cracks, for example in the shirt, and softer shrinkage cracks in the dark areas. These cracks and damages were retouched in the 1970s restoration and there is a synthetic, semi‐gloss varnish, very slightly discoloured, over the remains of an older varnish, also slightly discoloured. The bottom edge is somewhat ragged and retouched (see under Support). The signature is very worn and possibly strengthened.

Discussion

In a gloomy barn the winnower holds a wide, shallow basket with both hands against his thighs, tilted slightly downwards. Out of its far side rises a cloud of golden chaff, suggesting that he has just that minute jerked it upwards before bringing it down to rest against his legs. He wears open‐backed clogs stuffed with straw, brown calf‐length trousers (flecked with strokes of pale blue‐green and the odd touch of red), the knees covered with pieces of blue cloth tied on with string, a loose cream‐coloured shirt tucked into his trousers, and a pale‐red handkerchief tied over his hair, bending his ear over. Behind him stand a barrel and a broom. In the depths of the right background there appears to be a curtain, and some rags hanging on a line. On the left is a dark area broken by a horizontal beam, suggesting a further recess in the barn.

His basket is a winnowing fan (van in French, from which comes the word vanneur), a wide, flat basket with no lip at the front, which could be manipulated so that the chaff was worked to the front and tipped over the edge. The process of winnowing is described by Jane Ellen Harrison, who illustrates a fan from France, which she compares with the one in Millet’s Winnower: The art of winnowing with this form of basket is difficult to describe and by no means easy to acquire. The winnower takes as much grain and chaff mixed as he can conveniently hold and supports the basket against the knee. He then jerks and shakes the basket so as to propel the chaff towards the shallow open end and gradually drives it all out, leaving the grain quite clean. The difficult art of the winnower consists in a peculiar knack in shaking the basket so as to eject the chaff and keep the grain. The beginner usually finds that he inverts the procedure. The wind plays no part whatever in this process. It can be carried on with success on a perfectly still day, but is necessarily a somewhat tedious method and requires a highly skilled labourer.¹⁷ No doubt Millet has exaggerated the height to which the cloud of chaff could reach with such a method, perhaps adding the golden glow for aesthetic effect.¹⁸

Millet presumably started work on the picture in 1847. Moreau‐Nélaton states that it was begun at the beginning of 1847, or even at the end of 1846.¹⁹ It is one of the artist’s first pictures on themes of peasant life and marks a decisive break with his decorative, sometimes erotic subjects of the preceding years. It has also to be put into the context of the events leading up to the 1848 revolution. In February of that year a lack of social policy combined with a number of different factors, including increasing unemployment, disenfranchisement, economic depression and bad harvests, led to revolution: King Louis‐Philippe was overthrown and the Second Republic was formed. Many commentators discern a political angle, or at least a social awareness, in the painting.²⁰ Herbert offers a parallel between the development of Millet’s art towards this work and the social transformations taking place in France; although Millet’s political views remain unclear, it seems safe to assume that he was a Republican sympathiser. Boime links the subject with rural distress, suggesting that the isolated figure has hired himself out to earn money, because his own land alone does not produce enough for his family to live on.²¹ On the other hand, Guégan emphasises the link between Millet’s image and traditional eighteenth‐century depictions of rural labourers, and cites the example of Jean‐Jacques Lequeu’s (1757–1826), The Winnower of Oats (fig. 5).²² In a very similar scene the single figure, his basket resting against one raised knee, is set in a barn, against the light coming in from the doorway; like Millet’s, he presents a solitary, melancholy figure.²³

More explicitly, Lindsay suggests that the colour scheme based on the red, white and blue of the tricolore might have had political connotations. This colour combination was advocated in the announcement of a contest on 18 March 1848 for a painting, sculpture or medallion for the Republic, elaborated by Alexandre Auguste Ledru‐Rollin, Minister of the Interior in the newly‐formed Republican Government: [page 394] Your composition should unite in a single person Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. This trinity is the chief characteristic of the subject, and the signs of these three powers should appear in your work. Your Republic must be seated in order to suggest the idea of stability to the spectator. If you were a painter I would tell you not to dress your figure in the tricolor if artistic considerations were against it; but to let the national colours predominate in the picture as a whole.²⁴ However, Herbert maintains that the colours had nothing to do with the Revolution, but rather the picture is simply a three‐colour picture, with the primary colours of red (hat), blue (leggings) and yellow (shirt).²⁵ He also makes this point in connection with another work, Young Mother preparing a Meal (1847–9; Duluth, Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota), citing Delacroix as the influence behind the use of the three colours (in this case yellow of the brazier, red of the mother’s dress and blue of her skirt).²⁶

NG 6447 was exhibited to some acclaim at the Salon of 1848, despite Gautier’s reservations concerning the paint surface. F. de Lagenevais wrote of the painting that, placed in the big salon, is more original. The indecision of the form, the muddy and dusty tone of the colouring, contributes marvellously to the subject. You can imagine yourself in the barn itself, when the winnower shakes the grain, makes the chaff fly, and the atmosphere fills with a fine and grey dust through which you can only just make out objects.²⁷ Millet himself remembered the reception it had received after the critic Jules Castagnary, in his Salon criticism of 1866, retraced the beginnings of the naturalist school. Castagnary imagined himself back in 1855, put Courbet at the head and classed Millet as one of his satellites. Setting the matter straight in a letter to Alfred Sensier, Millet pointed out that he had exhibited his Vanneur way back in 1848.²⁸

It was Millet’s Republican friends the artists Charles Jacque and Philippe‐Auguste Jeanron (1807–1877) who persuaded the politician Alexandre Auguste Ledru‐Rollin (1807–1874) to visit the painter in April 1848. Perhaps it was the inclusion of the red, white and blue, or perhaps it was the subject matter that attracted Ledru‐Rollin to buy the picture. In any case, the sale led to a state commission that gave Millet the financial means to settle with his family in Barbizon. When Ledru‐Rollin fled into exile in 1854, many of his possessions were either sold, as was this picture, or confiscated. Once in America, this painting disappeared from view and its fate until 1972, when it was found in an attic near New York, remains obscure. The two later variants (listed below) have often been confused with NG 6447 in the literature.

Provenance²⁹

Bought from the artist by Alexandre Auguste Ledru‐Rollin in April 1848 for 500 francs; according to Lindsay, quoting from a letter of 17 April 1919 from Nelson Sanborn, it was purchased from Ledru‐Rollin by the American artist Robert Loftin Newman (1827–1912) in 1854 for 600 francs, via a one‐eyed dealer at 50 rue Lafayette, tentatively identified by Lindsay as Benoist;³⁰ the letter also states that Newman’s wealthy kinsman the tobacco planter from Kentucky Alexander Buchanan Barrett (1811–1861), who was living in Paris at the time, was appalled by the luxury in which Newman was living, and in 1854 seized objects, among them NG 6447, as repayment for a loan;³¹ the letter reads further: the ‘Winnower’ was among this lot until years after Mr N found them in possession of B’s son in law in lower 5th Ave. He gave them back to Mr N but the Winnower was not among them having been disposed of in Paris and Mr Quincy Shaw of Boston told N that he had seen the picture in other hands in Paris. However, Lindsay writes that Shaw may have seen one of the later versions of The Winnower, and that NG 6447 could have been brought to New York by either Barrett (who died in New York) or his son‐in‐law, Major Theodore Kane Gibbs (1840–1909), a civil war veteran, collector and patron, and, according to the Frick Archives for History of Collecting in America, an owner of works by Barye. It is possible that NG 6447 was in Boston in 1872, but was not, as was suggested in the later nineteenth century, destroyed in the fire of Boston in November 1872;³² it was, however, presumed lost or destroyed until its rediscovery in 1972 in an attic near New York; at the time of the 1975–6 exhibition NG 6647 was in a private collection in the United States³³ purchased at sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 13 October 1978, lot 178A.

Former Owner: Ledru‐Rollin

Alexandre Auguste Ledru‐Rollin (1807–1874), a lawyer by training, was appointed Minister of the Interior in the provisional Republican government set up after the Revolution of 1848. In 1849 he was critical of the new president, Louis‐Napoléon (who become Emperor Napoléon III in 1852), and was forced to flee to England after being involved in a demonstration.³⁴

Exhibitions

Salon of 1848, Paris (3341);³⁵ Paris and London 1975–6 (42 in Paris, 26 in London); New York 1977 (66); Amsterdam 1988–9 (1); London 1990b (not numbered); Paris 1998–9 (2); London 2009 (not numbered); Lille 2017–18 (21).

Literature

Salon reviews by L. Clément de Ris, L’Artiste, 9 April 1848 (quoted in Lindsay 1974, p. 239); Th. Gautier, La Presse, 2 May 1848; Prosper Haussard, Le National, 23 March 1848 (quoted in Lindsay 1974, p. 239); F. de Lagénevois Lagénevais , Revue des Deux Mondes, XXII, April–June 1848, p. 287 (quoted in [page 395] Lindsay 1974, p. 239); Fabien Pillet, Le Moniteur Universel, 11 April 1848 (quoted in Lindsay 1974, p. 239); A.‐J. Dupays, L’illustration, 21 May 1848; L. Jan, Le Siècle, 11 April 1848 . ; Sensier and Mantz, 1881, pp. 105–7; Thomson 1890, pp. 223–4; Bénézit‐Constant 1891, pp. 27–31, 50, 75, 147, 150, 151, 159, 160; Cartwright 1896, pp. 83–4; Alexandre 1902, Mviii; Muther 1905, p. 13; Moreau‐Nélaton 1921, I, pp. 69–71; II, pp. 121, 137; III, p. 133; Gsell 1928, pp. 24–6; Tabarant 1942, pp. 120, 140; Herbert 1970, p. 46 (Herbert 2002a, p. 27); Nochlin 1971, pp. 112–13; Clark 1973a, p. 74; Lindsay 1974; Fermigier 1977, pp. 34–8; London 1980, p. 27; Lepoittevin 1990, p. 51; Laughton 1991, p. 69; Adams 1994, p. 144; Herding 1995; Guégan 1998, pp. 21–3; Boime 2007, pp. 93–7; Callen 2015, pp. 145–6.

Versions and Copies

(1) The Winnower (about 1848?, Paris, Louvre, inv. RF 1440). Oil on panel, 38.5 × 29 cm (known after its donor as the Thomy‐Thiéry version; fig. 6).

(2) The Winnower (about 1848; Paris, Musée d’Orsay, inv. RF 1874). Oil on panel, 79 × 58.5 cm (known after its donor as the Chauchard version; fig. 7).

Several copies exist: Lindsay describes the copy commissioned from M. Cazot by Millet’s grandson, Jean Charles Millet in 1924; another copy of 1930 by Cazot is in a private collection in France and was probably based on the Thomy‐Thiéry version.³⁶

Drawings³⁷

(1) A detailed study, formerly in the collection of William Pitcairn Knowles (1820–1894; a prominent collector and connoisseur of Dutch seventeenth‐century art, a deacon in the Scots church in Rotterdam) and Georges Lutz (1835–1901), 37 × 27 cm; the head in right profile (fig. 8). In the Lutz sale, 26–27 May 1902, lot 148: ‘Le Vanneur, Etude de crayon sur papier chamois, signé deux fois du monogramme de la vente J.‐F.M.’. Illustrated in The Studio, special ‘Corot and Millet’ issue, 1902 (as collection of Pitcairn Knowles), pl. M 26. This drawing is closest in conception to NG 6447, particularly in the figure’s stance and the angle of the basket.

(2) Study for the head, in black chalk (?) (fig. 9). Illustrated in Laughton, 1991, p. 68 (from a photograph in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Dokumentatie, The Hague ) . Current whereabouts unknown. The head is closely related to (1) above.

(3) Study of a Man holding a Basket (Paris, Louvre, inv. RF 11189 recto). Black pencil on paper, 24.3 × 23.3 cm. This drawing is closest in conception to the Thomy‐Thiéry version.

(4) Man from the Back carrying a Large Basket (Paris, Louvre, inv. RF 11355 recto). Charcoal on beige paper, 11.7 × 8.6 cm. [page [396]] [page 397] In this drawing the figure of the winnower is seen from the back, and his head is bowed, in the manner of both the Thomy‐Thiéry version and NG 6447. The position of the legs, however, with the feet placed well apart, is closest to NG 6447.

(5) Studies of Figures and of a Bust nailed to a Door (Paris, Louvre, inv. RF 5646 recto). Black pencil on paper, 6.4 × 12.8 cm. On this sheet of drawings from an album are two small studies for the figure, in both of which he leans well back in the manner of the Chauchard version but with the head bowed, in the manner of the Thomy‐Thiéry and London versions. Closest overall to the Thomy‐Thiéry version.

(6) A further study for the Thomy‐Thiéry version but with the head not so quite bowed (Philadelphia Museum of Art, John. G. Johnson collection).³⁸ Charcoal on paper, 33 × 45.7 cm.

(7) A sheet of drawings, including that of the whole figure, which is closest to the NG version, plus a study of the arm (the arm bare above the elbow in the manner of the Pitcairn Knowles/Lutz drawing) and hand gripping the handle of the basket. Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art (fig. 10).³⁹

Other drawings on the theme of winnowing⁴⁰

(1) Man carrying a Basket, seen from the Back (Paris, Louvre, inv. RF 11352 recto). Black pencil on paper.

(2) Man walking, carrying a Basket (Paris, Louvre, inv. RF 11346 recto). Black pencil on paper.

(3) Man sifting Grain (private location). Black chalk, heightened with white on brownish paper, 19.1 × 14.3 cm. Aldeburgh, Cardiff and London 1956 (3, lent by James Mann Wordie, polar explorer, 1889–1962). The figure, seen more from the back, faces in the opposite direction, holding a winnowing basket against his knees, with sacks and a basket on the right.⁴¹ This drawing is probably later. It is heightened with white, a technique used by Millet later in life, from the 1850s and 1860s onwards.⁴²

(4) Winnower at Rest (1865–71; private collection). Charcoal on canvas, 52.9 × 34.8 cm. Exhibited, Le XIXe siècle, Talabardon & Gautier Gallery, Paris, 2002 (19); Old Master and 19th Century Drawings and Oil Sketches, W.M. Brady & Co., New York 2014 (37); Paintings, Drawings and Oil Sketches 1810–1930, W.M. Brady & Co., New York, 2016 (25; catalogue entry by A. Murphy). A later treatment, preparatory for an unfinished painting, showing a winnower standing, balancing the basket on the floor directly in front of him.

Influence and Copies

It has been suggested by R.L. Herbert that Courbet took the figure for one of the figures in his Stonebreakers (1849; formerly Dresden, destroyed), turning it into a three‐quarter view, and substituting stones for grain.⁴³

The engraving in the Illustrated London News, 20 September 1851, ‘French Agriculture – Winnowing’, takes the figure and rotates it for the two men depicted.⁴⁴

Notes