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Lot description
Jean Millet (1814-1875) French, "Lecon de Tricot" Framed First Printing Etching on Paper. Etching in black ink on fine watermarked laid paper, hand pulled from the copper plate executed in Paris in 1873. Depicts two figures huddled together in a dark room, the elder showing the younger how to knit. Signed bottom left and titled bottom right in the plate. Comes with certificate of authenticity and prior bill of sale. Overall Size: 13 x 12 in. Sight Size: 5 x 4 1/2 in. Jean-François Millet was born on October 4th, 1814 in Normandy, France and spent his youth working on his father’s farm before being sent to study with the portrait painter Bon Du Mouchel in Cherbourg in 1833. His innate talent led him to receive a scholarship to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1837, but his scholarship was terminated when his first submission to the Salon was rejected in 1839, and his wife Pauline died of consumption in 1844, leading him to return to Cherbourg. Undeterred, he remarried and moved first to Le Havre and then back to Paris, where he became friends with Constant Troyon, Narcisse Diaz, Charles Jacque, and Théodore Rousseau, founding the Barbizon school with them and finally achieving success at the Salon in the late 1840s. Often simultaneously scorned and adored by critics, his oil paintings of peasant farmers and landscapes were considered a fundamental part of the Realism art movement, and his pastels, Conté crayon drawings, and etchings brought him government patronage and financial stability in the 1860s. Sadly, the Franco-Prussian War uprooted his family and led to declining health, and he died on January 20th, 1875, unaware of the massive influence he would have on future artists like Georges Seurat, Salvador Dalí, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh.