Paysanne veillant son enfant

Thought Millet is best remembered as the perhaps the most honest chronicler of peasant life in the 19^th century, the years around 1855-65 show a marked shift in his work away from more masculine subject matter and toward intimate domestic scenes of women’s lives. No doubt these reflect the artist’s own reality during these years as the father of a large family which included six daughters. However, these scenes also reflect the artist’s interest during this period in 17^th century Dutch interiors, and have an obvious precedent in the works of artists like Rembrandt, Nicholas Maes, and Jan Vermeer. Like these artists Millet was skilled at balancing on the line between secular and spiritual, and it is easy to view these quiet figures as contemporary stand-ins for the Virgin and Child as easily as it is to view them as figures observed by the artist from life.
The theme is one that Millet had begun to explore in Les jeunes couturières (1850, private collection) and more explicitly in Women Sewing by Lamplight (La Veillée) (1853, MFA Boston) and would reach its apex in Winter Evening (circa 1867, MFA Boston), though the present work is less interested in dramatic light effects than in some of these other compositions. In Paysanne veillant son enfant, Millet’s attention is on carefully capturing the details of the scene with an economic and remarkably delicate line which is not always associated with his technique, but here further lends the scene a tender sweetness and intimacy. The sleeping baby in particular is a striking example of this, denoted through only a few carefully touched in soft lines over the shadow cast by its bassinet.
Finished drawings had been a central focus of Millet’s work since the mid-1850s as well, as he relied more and more on small-scale private collectors to sustain himself and his family in the face of often very harsh critical reactions to the paintings he exhibited regularly at the Salons. Until about 1860, those drawings had been executed almost entirely in black crayon, perhaps highlighted with a bit of white. In response to his patrons’ demand, however, Millet began to experiment with including small areas of very restrained pastel or crayon color, as can be seen in Paysanne veillant son enfant. The soft yellow of her marmotte (a tightly wrapped headscarf), and the soft blue and lavender gray of her outfit are entirely typical of the artist’s initial forays into this technique. The delicate flush of the mother’s cheeks as well suggests the early stirrings of the bravura pastelist Millet would become. The scissors hung over the back of a chair on a rust-colored ribbon are a recurring motif for the artist, and must have been an object that was inspired by his own domestic setting.
We are grateful to Alexandra Murphy for confirming the authenticity of this work.