Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet was a French Realist painter known for large scenes of ordinary life, rugged landscapes, and thick oil paint worked with a palette knife.
Painter
Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet was a French Realist painter associated with Barbizon, best known for paintings of agricultural workers and rural life.
Jean-François Millet quick facts
Millet’s quick facts cover his painting materials, methods, rural subjects, and role in French Realism during his nineteenth-century career.
| Full name | Jean-François Millet |
|---|---|
| Born | 1814 · Gruchy, Normandy, France |
| Died | 1875 · Barbizon, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Movements | Realism · Barbizon School |
| Paint types | Oil Paint · Watercolor Paint |
| Painting surfaces | Canvas · Paper |
| Painting methods | Painted oils from close observation and applied watercolor and ink washes over graphite drawings on paper |
| Common subjects | Peasant labor, gleaners, sowers, rural families, fields, and landscape |
| Notable works | The Gleaners, The Angelus, and The Sower |
Sources: Musée d'Orsay: The Gleaners, The Met: Garden Scene, The Met: Works on paper.
Paint types used by Jean-François Millet
Millet used oil for rural scenes on canvas and wood, and watercolor with graphite or ink for studies of labor and landscape on paper from observation.
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Oil paint
Millet used oil for rural subjects such as the Met’s Haystacks: Autumn, a finished landscape on canvas, and Shepherdess Seated on a Rock, painted on wood. The medium let him model figures and land with heavier, sustained passages than his watercolor studies, linking daily labor to the surrounding landscape.
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Watercolor
Millet made watercolor works on paper, sometimes combining the medium with graphite, ink, or wash. The Met catalogs A Woman Burning Weeds as watercolor and wash over graphite and Hamlet in a Wheat Field, Vichy as watercolor, ink, and wash. These sheets document a separate drawing-based practice from his oil paintings.
Sources: The Met: Haystacks: Autumn, oil on canvas, The Met: Shepherdess Seated on a Rock, oil on wood, The Met: A Woman Burning Weeds, watercolor and wash over graphite, The Met: Hamlet in a Wheat Field, Vichy, watercolor, ink, and wash.
Painting surfaces used by Jean-François Millet
Records identify Jean-François Millet's use of canvas and paper, with named examples below showing how each support functions in the finished work.
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Canvas
The Met catalogs Millet’s Haystacks: Autumn as oil on canvas. This landscape uses the support for a broad view of agricultural land, with harvested stacks set against changing light. It documents canvas for finished oil painting, while other museum records identify his work on wood and paper.
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Paper
Millet made watercolor studies and drawings on paper, including the Met’s A Woman Burning Weeds and Hamlet in a Wheat Field, Vichy. The latter combines watercolor, ink, and wash, showing paper as the support for layered drawing and color rather than as a presumed base for his oils.
Sources: Musée d'Orsay: The Gleaners, The Met: Garden Scene, The Met: Works on paper.
Painters similar to Jean-François Millet
Millet and Courbet both brought rural workers into French Realist painting, while Daumier focused more often on urban life and social satire.
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French Realist painter, caricaturist, and printmaker known for social observation, satirical lithographs, and ordinary people.