File:A child's guide to pictures (1908) (14752766795).jpg

Identifier: childsguidetopic00caff (find matches)
Title: A child's guide to pictures
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Caffin, Charles Henry, 1854-1918
Subjects: Painting -- Study and teaching
Publisher: New York, Baker & Taylor
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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cesuggests a feeling of repose; shall I say of acquies-cence in the necessity of the contrast ? For Milletdid not consider himself a reformer whose work isto set things right and to do away with contrasts;but an artist, whose aim was to harmonise the con-trasts and to find some balance between the lightsand darks of life; just as Stevenson out of his weak-ness and strength made his life a beautiful one. And now let us study the lines of the figure. Inthe first place you wdll agree that they enclose a formwhich is unmistakably that of a man sowing grain.It was necessary for Millet to arrange the lines, insome way that should convey this impression. Butthere are many other ways in which they might havebeen arranged, so as to obtain this result. For inthe act of sowing a man takes many positions andany one of these would have done, if all the artisthad desired was to make us hnow that the man wassowing. But Millet wished to do more. As a boy he toiled in his fathers fields, so he had 100
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The Sower. J. F. MiUet. --%^^^°k^ Naturalistic Composition a fellow-feeling for the peasants; and as he watchedthem, day after day laboring so faithfully, he founda big idea in their work. It was something likethis—work is necessary, and to do our own share ofit as well as we can is the big thing for each of us.And the oldest work of all and the most necessaryis the growing of the wheat. To-day the seed is laidin rows by machine-drills; but in Millets time itwas scattered by hand, just as it had been since manbegan to sow. This sower, then, that he watchedwas a descendant of a long line of sowers, stretchingback to the beginning of civilisation; and still in thefields of Barbizon he was doing his humble shareof the worlds necessary work. Millet felt the big-ness of this idea; and in his imagination the manwas no longer Jacques or Jean—a sower; he became*^ The Sower, a type—a big heroic type. Then, asMillet felt him to be, so he set to work to paint him,choosing such lines as wo

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