Patrick Bade
Millet and Daumier

Patrick Bade | Millet and Daumier | 07.07.21

- Patrick.

• Hi. Hi, Wendy.

• [Wendy] Hi. All good?

• Very good. Yes.

• Good.

• Oops. No, I’ve done that, right? Yeah, good. Right. Slideshow. Great. All ready to go.

• Excellent. Alright, how are we doing? Let’s have a look. What is the time? 9:31.

• [Judi] Wends, are you still with us?

• I am. Can you hear me?

• [Judi] I can hear you, yes. But we can’t see you, but, we’ve still got people coming in.

• [Wendy] Okay. Alright. Well, Patrick, let me just say good morning to everybody. Welcome. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to everybody. Patrick, once again a million thanks. Looking forward to the presentation today. And to thank you Judes, as always. So Patrick, whenever you’re ready, over to you.

• Right, well, I’m ready to go. Thank you very much.

• Thanks.

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

• Thank you very much, Judi. So today I’m going to talk about two artists who were mainly famous for depicting the proletariat. In the case of Millet on the left, it’s the rural proletariat and the case of Daumier on the right, it’s the urban proletariat. And you may say, “Hey, what’s new?” Artists have been painting workers, poor people since the 17th century. But there is something quite new in these two images that I’m showing you. Neither is a particularly big picture, but the concept of both of them is enormous. They have a monumental, even a heroic quality, which is absent from earlier depictions of working class people. This is a typical example, 17th century Adriaen Brouwer. He’s a Flemish artist who specialised in lowlife genre scenes. So in reality, this is a tiny picture. It’s actually quite a bit smaller than the Daumier and the Millet I’ve just shown you. And within that picture, of course you have multiple but very small figures. And there’s a lot more detail, there’s a lot more incidental information, and it’s humorous and anecdotal. None of these things, of course, in the Millet and the Daumier.

The 18th century loved pastoral scenes. Those shepherdess. Think of, you know, Meissen porcelain figures, and there’s a Boucher here on the right hand side, very unrealistic, I’m sure no shepherd has ever really looked like this with her rouged cheeks and powder hair and her frothy pretty dress wouldn’t be very practical in the countryside. A dress like this. So that’s Boucher on the right hand side. And the shepherdess as seen by Millet on the left. Laundresses, I mean, before the invention of the washing machine, a very large percentage of the female population of the western world was employed in laundry of one kind or another.

So this is a Fragonard. These are Fragonard laundresses on the left hand side, very picturesque and a big tough laundry woman by Daumier on the right hand side. And so, yes, I want to start with a quote from Van Gogh. He wrote this in 1884, and he said, “I consider Millet not Manet to be the essentially modern artist who has opened up a new horizon to many.” Now that I think in the 20th century that would’ve been very much a minority view. But there has just been, a listener actually emailed me about this. There has just been an exhibition organized by the Van Gogh Museum that I think travelled through America really trying to put forward this view of Vincent Van Gogh, of the importance of Millet in the development of early modern art.

Here is one of Millet’s most famous paintings, “The Sower” on the left hand side, and on the right is a copy of it that Van Gogh made when he was interned in the asylum in St. Remy. So Millet’s reputation it’s been extraordinary in its vicissitudes of this reputation. Like many artists, he struggled for recognition and then became very successful, very famous towards the end of his life and even more famous after he died. And the painting, the history of this picture you see is an extraordinary one. It’s called “The Angelus”. It’s now in the Musee d'Orsay, was in the Louvre, and it’s certainly one of the most famous paintings in the world. And at one point, it had the record for the most expensive painting ever sold. And it was commissioned by an American called Thomas W. Appleton, who actually never bothered to come and collect it. So Millet sold this picture for 1000 francs.

And then by around 1870, he was already, he was recognised he was a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur and the prices of his pictures began to rise. And the very famous dealer Durand-Ruel bought the picture from the original owner for 30,000 francs. So that’s, you know, 30 times the original price and resold it quickly for 38,000. That’s a very modest margin for a dealer. But then about 10 years later, in the early 1880s, there were a series of incidents that really caught the public imagination with this picture. Another dealer called Secretan bought it this time for 160,000 franc. So that’s quite a markup in a decade from 30,000. And he then sold it immediately to a dealer called Petite, Jorge Petite for 200,000. And then within weeks, he rebought it for 300,000. And then he auctioned it with all this very clever thing to do, of course, fantastic publicity. And he auctioned it and it sold for a staggering sum of 553,000.

The Louvre had wanted to buy it, but didn’t, it failed, it was something called the American Art Association that bought it. And of course the French didn’t like this at all. You can imagine, it was a kind of national humiliation. So it then went to America and it toured America almost like a circus. It was going from city to city in America. And then the American Art Association sold it to a wealthy Frenchman, the owner of the department store Magazin de Louvre, for an even huger sum, 800,000. This was the largest sum ever paid for a work of art. And then he left it to Louvre in 1909. And it’s been in French public ownership ever since.

Now, it just became so famous. It was so widely reproduced. There was hardly a Catholic household on the globe that did not have a reproduction of this picture. So I think what you can see here, if you go and see it in the d'Orsay you wiggle your head around, you’ll see that it has been very badly damaged. And that was because in 1932 when the great economic crisis really hit France, an unemployed man went to the Louvre and he slashed it. And I think it’s a very interesting topic why certain works of art are attacked, Michelangelo’s Pieta or whatever. And I can see in a way why somebody who is disturbed or crazy or unhappy that this painting would be an obvious target.

It’s one of those things, I’ve mentioned when talking about “The Hay Wain”, recently, that for British people, it’s very difficult for us to look at that painting with any kind of objectivity. And I think for a lot of middle class Catholic people, it’s very, very hard to look at this picture and see it objectively. And it’s acquired a sort of layer of unhealthy sentimentality. Of course the Angelus is the bell that’s rung calling people to prayer. You’ve got a kind of gender differentiation here.

It’s the woman who prays. The man does not pray. He bows his head respectfully as she prays. And she is the one who is illuminated by the setting son. So the painting, I suppose it became over famous. It became in the eyes of many associated with a kind of very conservative bourgeois Catholicism. And of course, the one person in the 20th century who loved this picture, was obsessed by it, of course, was Salvador Dali. And he made numerous versions of it. Rather wickedly, he suggested that the man is holding his hat in front of him ‘cause he’s trying to cover up the fact that he has a huge erection. But that’s, of course Dali’s own very perverse interpretation.

So here is Jean-Francois Millet. He’s a burly looking character. And he had this to say about himself. “They think they contain me, that they can impose on me the art of the Salon. Well, no! Peasant, I was born and peasant, I shall die. I shall stand my ground and not withdraw one sabot, one wooden shoe.” Well, he was born into a family of farmers in Normandy, but it’s not quite what we might imagine today by the term peasant. I mean, they were landowners, they were wealthy, but they were reasonably comfortably off. And then he decided to, he studied art for a while in Cherbourg, then went back to work on the farm. And then went to Paris.

That’s what, in those days, what you did was you enrolled in, you had to enrol in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but you also had to enrol in the studio of a well-known respectable artist. Oh, here he is. This is a rather charming photograph of Millet and his wife and some of his children. So he enrolled very inappropriately, really in the studio of Paul Delaroche. Delaroche is an artist I’m going to be talking about, I think in about 10 days time. He is the first of the artists who came to be called pompier, firemen. These very academic, it’s a very slick, academic kind of art that was popular at the Salon. Slickness is the one quality that Millet most definitely doesn’t have. He didn’t respond at all well to the teaching of Delaroche. Delaroche declared him to be unteachable.

So he then goes back to Cherbourg and for a year or so, he scrapes a living by painting portraits. I think they’re very appealing, very sober, straightforward portraits of middle class people. Here’s another one of these early portraits. So this is beginning of the 1840s. And then for a short time, in the mid forties, he develops what he called his manier flury, his flowery or florid manner where he’s certainly trying to get away from the sense of slickness and smoothness of Delaroche. What’s he looking at here? Who he’s looking at? I think particularly at Fragonard, he’s looking at 18th century painting and developing a much more painterly style.

Somebody asked me recently, what does painterly mean? Well, I think you can see it in this, where you can clearly see the marks of the brush and the texture of the paint on the surface of the picture. So as an escape from that bland academic style, he’s looking initially at the 18th century, although he doesn’t adopt an 18th century palette of colours. We’ve got Boucher here on the left, those sweet deep bathroom colours, typical of the Rococo, pale pinks and blues and bluey greens.

So this is a rather Boucher subject by Millet on the right hand side of a quite a sexy peasant girl with a slight wardrobe malfunction with the blouse slipping off her shoulder and a rather cupid-like child. Of course the colour here is very sober. And again, I think it’s actually the 18th century artist who he really looks at at this point, and learns a lot from is again, Fragonard. And you see Fragonard here in the background. This was his first success at the Salon throughout the 1840s. So the 1840s, a very, very conservative decade. And any artist who deviated from the conventional were quite likely to be rejected from the Salon. And that was very, very serious because in the 1840s, the whole private art sector of dealers has really hardly begun to develop. And the only way an artist could reach the public and make a reputation was through the Salon.

So finally in 1847, this picture of Oedipus cut down from the tree was exhibited at the Salon. And it was noticed and it got some quite favourable reviews. It’s got a very, I would say, very old masterly, oh, by comparison, another picture in the 1847 Salon was the “Young Greeks cock fighting” by Jean-Leon Gerome, which you see on the right hand side. This is an example of precisely that kind of academic slickness that Millet is rebelling against. And you can see how freely, powerfully, vigorously painted the Millet is compared to this glassy smooth slickness of the Gerome on the right hand side. Where has he got this from? Well, I think he’s been been off to the Louvre and he’s looked at Rembrandt.

Actually this particular Rembrandt is not in the Louvre, it’s in the Alte Pinakothek, but Rembrandt is I think a major influence, really coming back, very strongly into fashion in the 1840s. Lots of artists, as we saw last time with Gericault looking at Rembrandt at this time. And also, of course, Delacroix. Delacroix still around in the 1840s, doesn’t die till the 1860s. This is a detail of “The Massacre of Chios” which has been suggested, dunno how convincing it is that the kneeling figure is borrowed in reverse from this Delacroix on the left hand side. This is painting actually painted in 1847, where we feel that the mature Millet is finally arriving. Because of the subject matter and because of the treatment of the subject matter, it shows a young mother preparing a meal.

It’s quite a small picture, but again, you’ve just got a single figure with her child. No distracting detail here. It’s very, very simplified, very boldly painted, and it has a monumental sculptural quality to it. And he was certainly very, very keen on Michelangelo. That’s another one of the big influences of his early work. And it’s been suggested, really this is meant to be a realist with a capital R peasant version of one of these prophetess that you can find on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And I mentioned, was it last week, I think the last time, Louis Le Nain.

The Le Nain brothers, Louis is the most important of them. There’s Mathieu and Antoine. But Louis is the key one they think, although we don’t really know much about them, they’re rather mysterious figures, who painted in France in 17th century. Totally, totally forgotten, rediscovered in the 1840s just at this point when realism is getting going. And so what is special about the Le Nain brothers, especially Louis Le Nain, is the fact that they’re painting peasants, but they’re painting them with a certain monumentality, a certain gravitas, which the new artists are seeking. So I’m sure that Le Nain was certainly one of the key influences on Millet as he had been on Courbet. And another artist that Millet was passionate about all the way through his life.

When he could afford it, he bought prints by Pieter Bruegel, the elder, this wonderful drawing, I don’t know if he knew this particular drawing, but he knew similar things, where you have simple figures, pleasant figures depicted in a very monumental, very sculptural way. And a last very important influence. Another artist who really, whose reputation was sky rocketing in the 1840s was Chardin. And Chardin was an 18th century painter, often of, you know, genre scenes, sometimes middle class, but sometimes also servants and working class people and very humble objects who was popular and successful and liked in the 18th century, although because of the so-called hierarchy of the genres where it meant that the kind of subject he painted, like this painting on the right hand side, was not really taken seen as high art by connoisseurs in the 18th century.

But that hierarchy of genres is now completely thrown out the window once you get to realism. And that, you know, the humblest object, according to realist is as worthy of consideration as the Apollo Belvedere or whatever. So we have Chardin on the right hand side and an etching by Millet, I think very influenced by Chardin on the left. Now this is a real breakthrough picture. I’ve mentioned a few times that people have asked me questions this about this idea of zeitgeist, you know, the spirit of the time and coincidences. So it’s extraordinary that this picture was exhibited at the Salon of 1848. Of course, right in the middle of the 1848 revolution. It’s called “The Winnower”. The original version was thought to have disappeared for a very, very long time. But it was rediscovered, I think in the 1970s and bought by the National Gallery in London.

So the Brits can go and see it there. Again, it’s not an enormous picture, it’s a picture of quite a modest size, but it has, again, a heroic, monumental quality to it. It’s a very humble figure and a humble job that he’s doing, winnowing the corn. Within the picture itself, within the picture space, of course the figure takes up much larger amount of the paint surface than would be the case in a 17th century painting of peasants. And it’s just a single figure. And everything, again, is very abstracted, very simplified. The face is in shadow and very vague. I mean the facial features are not individualised in every way. One theory about this picture, and I’m never sure whether I believe it or not, is that there is a patriotic element because you’ve got in a rather muddy version, red, white and blue, the colours of the flag of the Republic of France, the tricolour flag. Hmm, not sure about that. 'Cause this is a pretty well a standard colour scheme for any painting by Millet at this point of his career.

But again, just to make the, to repeat the comparison, this is a 17th century Dutch painting of a peasant where of course the face is characterised even caricatured and you’ve got much more detail and so on. And so this bold, bold simplification that you’ve got here. And people were, you know, 'cause they were used to that slickness of Gerome and Delaroche and so on, people were shocked by what they saw as the crudeness of this painting. I want to give you a quote from, where is it? Yes. Theophile Gautier, romantic poet and and critic talking of, I don’t know if it’s this particular picture, but it’s around this time and of Millet’s work.

He says, “He trowels onto his dish cloth canvas using no turps and no oil, great masonries of colour, paint so dry that no varnish can quench its thirst. Nothing could be more rugged, ferocious, bristling or crude.” I think it’s because of what came later. You know, artists like Van Gogh who built on what Millet did. You know, obviously Van Gogh is a lot more rugged, a lot more crude than anything that Millet ever did. But in its context, this was very radical. Here’s another detail.

This is a painting of during the 1850s “The Gleaners”. These women are socially the lowest of the low. I mean, they were the people once the harvest has taken place, people were so desperately poor that they had to do this backbreaking work of going through the fields to pick up the grains of corn that had been left behind. And it’s a tremendously powerful image. To me it has, although it’s realist with a capital L it has a classical quality to it. Classical in terms of, it’s got this rather frieze-like composition, you have these very simple sculptural forms. It’s great sense of harmony and balance in the composition.

It’s been pointed out that the sense of backbreaking work and oppression is emphasised by the high horizon and the fact that none of the women are bent over, so none of them, even the one who’s least bent over her head only goes up to the horizon. None of them actually appears the horizon. Now, one, the critic of the conservative newspaper, “Le Figaro” was shocked by this picture. And he says, he saw it as being a provocative and revolutionary image. And he said in the background, you can see the pikes of the French revolution. And we know that the scaffolds of the terror of 1793 are not far away.

So I think the big question is, how did Millet intend any of that? How political was he? I think the thing was in the middle of the 19th century, France was so divided politically that it was almost impossible to exhibit any picture and not have some critic give it some kind of political interpretation. And just to go back a minute to “The Winnower”. As I said, this was in the Salon of 1848 during the revolution. And it was bought, the first owner was Ledru-Rollin who was briefly president of France after this 1848 left wing revolution. So he was a socialist and he clearly saw this as a socialist picture. And people generally assumed, wrongly actually, that Millet himself was a socialist.

In fact after he died, many of his letters were published. And it was very clear from the letters that actually he was politically very conservative. And that when he painted pictures like these, while he might show sympathy for hardship and poverty, he was certainly did not want any kind of radical change in French society. He paints this 'cause he finds it beautiful and he thinks it’s eternal and he actually doesn’t want it to change. But, Pissarro, of course, who was a very radical socialist, very, very left wing indeed was, you know, longing for the revolution and was very distressed and very upset when these letters by Millet were published that showed that Millet did not share his ideas in any way.

Pissarro always had the answer to these things. As with Degas, who he admired and was a raving mad right wing, you know, to the right of Genghis Khan, he was, oh no, he doesn’t really mean it, he doesn’t really think it. His art tells a different story. These are just words. It’s not the true opinion of the artist. So a very, very powerful, very influential image. You can see Pissarro copying the pose here. That’s in the 1880s. Also in the 1880s, George Seurat looking very much at Millet, very influenced by his drawing style, as we shall see shortly. Oh, where did I put my watch?

This is a, you can say a tragic image, the man with a hoe, the exhaustion of, you know, this relentless very, very hard physical work. But as this is not actually a protest picture. In a way he’s celebrating this timeless lifestyle, celebrating hard work as he is in this picture. I’ve got a quote that relates to this. This is “Faggot Gatherers”. This is another very, very hard, like stone breaking, it’s a very tough way to earn your living. And where is my quote?

This is what Millet has to say about this, “I must confess at the risk of being taken for a socialist, that it is that the treatment of the human condition that touches me most in art, for I never see the joyous side, the happiest thing I know is the calm and the silence one so deliciously experiences in the forest or in the fields, you are seated beneath the trees, enjoying a sense of wellbeing and tranquillity. And you see emerging from a small path, a pitiful figure burdened with faggots. The striking and unexpected appearance of this figure takes you back instantaneously to the sad fate of man, weariness.”

So, this is the fate of man and he accepts it. He does not really want to change it. This is a picture called “Going to work”. And it’s been pointed out that it’s really a translation of a biblical theme. The expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. He was very well up, very well aware of Renaissance art. He certainly would’ve known the Masaccio Brancacci Chappel frescoes famous depiction of the expulsion. And particularly I think that, you know, the positioning of the man’s legs, the way he’s walking, I think shows an awareness of that image. And the way that the basket is placed over the woman’s head also, I think gives it a certain religious feeling, gives her a Madonna-like look.

Now when Millet was taken to visit Delacroix in 1853, you can imagine Delacroix really didn’t, he did regard Millet’s a sort of bearded, unwashed, undesirable socialist type. I’ve got two quotes actually from the Delacroix journal. First one he says, “He belongs to that constellational crew of bearded artists who made the revolution of 1848 thinking apparently that it would bring equality of talent as well as equality of wealth.” Typical bitchy comment from Delacroix. And again, talking about pictures like these, he said, “They brought Millet to my studio this morning. He spoke of Michelangelo and the Bible, which he says, is almost the only book he reads. This explains the rather pretentious look of his peasants.”

So yes, these images of peasants do have a very portentous quality, I suppose this one, “The Sower” is the most famous of all, and it’s an image which has indeed, in the very literal sense of the word, become iconic. And it’s become a socialist icon. It’s been used endlessly, you know, in Cuba, in the old Soviet Union, either the actual image or posters based on the image. But I don’t think revolution is not what this painting is about. It’s really about the lifecycle and the renewal of life. Oh, this is Van Gogh, of course he did several versions of the subject inspired by Millet. And it’s also the subject of pictures like these, Where you’ve got a sort of metaphor here of the grafting of the tree and the child that’s been born to these two peasants.

And here that the planting of the potatoes. and this is of course for Van Gogh, these paintings are very, very important, very influential. And he was certainly thinking of them when he painted his famous potato eaters and said that he wanted it to look as this painting does, like you know, putting the paint on the surface is a kind of manual labour like digging the ground for the potatoes. And he wanted the paint to speak of that as well, the paint surface to look, he wanted the pictures to look like it’s actually painted with the soil in which the potatoes have been grown. Now there’s this side of Millet. I dunno what you think about this.

Throughout the 20th century, he’s been repeatedly condemned by critics for being sentimental. Actually, I find this a very touching picture of the peasants trying to help their child take its first steps. And it actually remind, I don’t know whether Millet knew this wonderful little drawing in the British Museum by Rembrandt of his wife and nurse and the nurse trying to teach one of his children, probably Titus, to take his first steps. And this one. This is of course in a way, like a lot of very kitschy greetings cards. The mother helping her son to have a wee and the little girl looking on curiously. I don’t find these pictures either kitschy or sentimental. I think the sobriety and the simplicity prevents that from Millet.

He’s a wonderful draughtsman. I think he’s one of the great draughtsman of the 19th century working in charcoal in chalks and developing a highly original, highly individual technique that later on had a profound impact on Seurat. So here is a conte crayon. These are conte crayon drawings, that’s a rather waxy crayon. And it’s Millet on the left hand side and Seurat on the right hand side. And he can get extraordinary effects of luminosity rubbing this waxy crown over textured paper. And this of course is a technique that is picked up.

So this is Millet in the 1840s or 50s, and this is Seurat in the 1880s using a very similar technique. So most of his paintings through his career, he’s interested, as he says in the human condition and human figures. But in the last few years of his life, he painted a series of really, of very powerful, I would say magisterial landscapes. I mean this is a painting painted between 1871 and 1873 called “The Gust of Wind”. So 1871, 73, it’s contemporary with Impressionism.

Of course this has nothing to do, none of these pictures really are impressionist pictures or even proto-Impressionist. They’re not painted en plein air. They’re not painted out of doors. And they’re not meant to be a direct transcription of what the eye sees. These are, this is recollected emotion painting, paintings made in the studio, largely from memory, not directly from nature. This I think is a very extraordinary, has a sort of almost hallucinatory visionary quality. It’s called “The Bird Nesters”. And it’s actually based on a memory from his childhood.

Apparently the peasants in Normandy, they would go out at night with torches and they would frighten and stun all the wood pigeons who would sort of flutter around helplessly and then they would batter them to death. And so this is, I think, an extraordinarily powerful and actually rather disturbing image. So this is dated 1874. So just to make that comparison with Impressionism, this is the Impressionist sunrise that was exhibited in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874. So you can see he’s actually doing something going in a very different direction from the younger impressionists.

This picture is called spring. And again, it’s actually painted slowly over several years. But to me, again, it has a kind of visionary quality, and an extraordinary sense of the fecundity of nature. and it conveys also, it is based on observation of reality. And I think he has captured that heightened, you know, when you get that kind of weather where you get a rainbow, you get these very intense, very heightened colours that we get here. And for comparison here, this is spring according to Millet. This is spring according to Pissarro. And so in some ways I think these landscapes in a way are a throwback to Romanticism and here for comparison, we’ve got Millet, top left and Caspar David Friedrich, bottom right.

Now, I’m going to move on to Honore Daumier, born in 1808. There is a photograph which you can see on the left, the print that he made on the right is a lithograph, actually earned him a six months in prison in 1831. He’s attacking the new regime of Louis Philippe, the Orleanist monarchy that had taken power in 1830. It was really, I think, Louis Philippe’s great misfortune to have Daumier around. Our image of the Orleanist regime, 1830 to 1848 is hugely coloured by Daumier. We tend to see it through his eyes, just as you might say we see Charles I’s court and his period through the eyes of Van Dijk.

I think I’d rather be remembered through the eyes of Van Dijk than by Daumier. What we think of this is as being fantastically corrupt, materialist in a very bad way period in French history. So what we see here is Louis Philippe as Gargantua. He’s shovelling, they’re shovelling gold that have come from the people of France into his mouth. And he’s shitting out titles and honours and jobs and so on through his rear end.

Now Daumier, I think we can assume that he was a pretty left wing. He’s the only really major French artist of the 19th century, you can say really does come from the working classes. The great bulk of French artists in the 19th century came from either the grand bourgeoisie like Degas or Manet or the lesser bourgeoisie, the middle classes. His father was a glass worker in a glass factory, had very little education, and as a boy, he worked as a messenger, runner in law courts for bailiffs. And this as well as I suppose his experience of six months in prison, same prison incidentally, Sainte-Pelagie, that Courbet would be imprisoned in later on, gave him a lifelong absolutely pathological hatred of lawyers. And we’ll come up to that in a minute or so.

So he starts off his career in the 1830s, really coincidentally with this new regime in France, as a political caricaturist working for a magazine called “La Caricature”. And this is how he earned his living throughout his life. Extremely prolific. He made over 4,000 lithographic prints and a thousand woodcut prints. So here is Louis, our image of Louis Philippe turning into a pear is again, very much the creation of Daumier. This is Guizot, who was the final prime minister of the Orleanist monarchy in the 1840s, sculpted by Daumier on the left hand side. I will be talking about Daumier’s sculpture in the context of 19th century sculpture in about a week’s time, and a lithograph of him on the right. So what everybody in France remembers about Guizot is his catchphrase “enrich yourselves, make yourself rich”.

So this period of the 1830s and 40s, it’s a bit like say the 1980s. It’s a period that is notorious for shameless greed and corruption. You know, think back to the slogans of the 1980s. Greed is good. It’s a very similar philosophy. Another very famous print of Daumier attacking the corruption of the political classes. This shows the Chamber of Deputies and it’s called “The legislative belly”. A defining image of the Louis-Philippe monarchy was this lithograph by Daumier inspired by an incident in 1834 when in a working class area of Paris, Rue Transnonain, actually it’s now Rue Beaubourg, so no longer a working class area, it’s right next to the Pompidou Centre. But, and of course the streets were much narrower then.

And as the National Guard went along the street, somebody from a tenement fired a shot at the National Guard, the National Guard overreacted. They went into the tenement and they massacred the inhabitants of the tenement, men, women, and children. And this was this extraordinary, powerful image that Daumier produced of this incident. So between 1830 and 1835, most of Daumier’s caricatures are of a very political nature. As I said, I think we can assume from the fact that he worked for these left wing journals, that he was left wing and socialist in his views. But you shouldn’t assume too much from the actual caricatures because he did not write the slogans. He did not write the captions.

The newspaper would say, we want you to show this figure, this figure in this situation. And it was the newspaper editors who actually added the captions. Well, in 1835, I mean the situation as far as the government was concerned was really getting out of hand. And they introduced very, very strict political censorship. And that’s what this image is about. And thereafter, until really, until the revolution of 1848, Daumier turns his attention more to social commentary, often 'cause he’s not only the scourge of Louis Philippe and the scourge of corrupt government. He’s the scourge of the literally fat bourgeoisie that you see here.

But also very, very funny observation of manners and fashions, has tremendous fun as you can see here with the fashion from the 1840s up to the 1860s of crinoline when fashionable Parisian women were really walking around with a huge parrot cage with a tent draped over it. And this shows a poor road sweeper being more or less put out of business by a woman sweeping past in a crinoline and sweeping up all the muck in the street on her crinoline. And so, and there are many other, I think delightful and hilarious images of the hazards of wearing crinolines. And the new fashions, new habits, new crazes was in the 1860s. It was a new craze for people to bathe in the river Seine. And we know this of course, from the very, very first fully impressionist paintings by Monet and Renoir.

Monet, top right of people bathing in the Seine and a rather different take on it from Daumier on the left. Many of his images are very, very anti-feminist. Being socialist, being left wing did not mean necessarily that you were in favour of women’s rights. These really quite nasty, I suppose, images of women who are not doing what women should do, which is stay home and look after their babies, You know, the idea of women journalists, women writers was strongly disapproved of. But whether this is, again, whether this is, these are actually Daumier’s ideas or whether he was just required to produce these images and the captions were added by other people. As I said, I think he genuinely really hates lawyers. And he produced hundreds and hundreds of images of arrogant and corrupt and unpleasant lawyers.

He also gives us a wonderful panorama in a way, of the art world of Paris. Many, many images of the great Salon that took place every May and June. And you can see how the pictures hang frame to frame, floor to ceiling, always very mocking. Here are the artists, a group of artists desperately trying to finish up a picture to submit it for the opening date of the Salon. And then this terrible business of having pictures refused until well into the 19th century. If you submitted a picture to the Salon and it was refused, they actually stamped “Refuse” on the back of it, which would of course make it completely unsellable.

So here are disconsolate artists whose pictures have been refused. And here is an artist who’s actually destroying his refused picture and saying, “Ungrateful country, you shall not have my masterpiece.” He’s mocking of different kinds of art. Of course he doesn’t like the bland idealisation of the Salon masters of the Pompier. This is Gerome’s version of Pygmalion on the left hand side and Daumier’s mocking parody of it on the right hand side. Nor is he necessarily very sympathetic towards more avant garde painters. I think the idea, again, the idea of painting plein air, didn’t appeal to him any more than it did to Degas. So I think this is an image, well, certainly Degas would’ve liked this 'cause he was, Degas used to say he wanted to appoint a special brigade of police who had permission to shoot dead on sight any artist painting out of doors.

But I think Monet might, even Monet, who was of course a great painter out of doors, might have appreciated this image, which shows a second artist painting out of doors who’s actually not looking at nature. He’s looking at the work of the first artist. And this was something of course, that Monet complained about bitterly late in his life, that all he had to do was set up a canvas in front of a haystack and there’d be a cue of artists behind him wanting to paint the same haystack in the same way. So in his lifetime he was known as a political caricaturist or a social caricaturist. He was quite late in his life that he began to paint seriously. And it wasn’t until really the very end of his life, that any dealers or collectors became interested as well.

There were a few artists who knew about him and appreciated him, notably Degas. This is his first surviving painting. Dates from 1848, the year of the revolution when it’s the return of, you know, it’s the end of, briefly the end of the monarchy, 1848 and it’s the second Republic. And there was a public competition announced to paint a monumental picture of the public. And this was his entry, which was actually interestingly not rejected out of hand. He was invited to paint a larger, more finished version of it, which he was unable to do. But typically, of course, this is the picture, very bland academic picture that actually won the competition. This is by Gerome on the right hand side. And making the same comparison I made between Millet and these very bland Salon painters.

This is Bouguereau on the left hand side, you can see this painting of a nude Mary Magdalene on the right hand side, would’ve been for great many people quite hard to take if they were used to Bouguereau and Gerome. Like Millet, he looks to the old masters, this was, again not finished, but one of his most ambitious works. And it’s actually, of course a moment that in the Bible, in the Christian Bible, the New Testament, when the Jews call for the release of Barabbas instead of Jesus Christ. Of course I know Trudy’s talked a great deal about this because in a way it’s that particular fateful moment in the New Testament, which is the origin of 2000 years of Jew hatred and antisemitism. I’m not quite sure really why he would’ve been interested in this. I’m not aware that Daumier was antisemitic or there any antisemitic images by him. I think it’s more that I think he was attracted by Rembrandt, again, very fascinated by Rembrandt.

And this is Rembrandt’s version of the same subject on the left hand side. But this is perhaps one of his most, what he’s most famous for are these very gritty images of modern urban life. And once again, I’d say as with Millet, it’s a rather tragic view of modern life. It’s a world that’s populated, to use a horrible term, with losers, with lonely, unhappy, failed, miserable people. For comparison, again it brings into the question, what is realism? This is a Victorian painting of the interior of a bus in London by Egley. And his idea of realism, of course, is to give you as much information as he possibly can about the dresses and all the incidentals, very different approach to giving us reality from Daumier.

And this again is a tremendously powerful image, has great gravitas, great monumentality of a washer woman that certainly had a very powerful impact on Degas and the use of the contra jure, against the light, the simplification of form. Degas, I think has been directly inspired by Daumier. and also I think Degas was very interested by Daumier’s theatre pictures. And he leads the way, he’s ahead of Degas in being very fascinated by the whole atmosphere of the theatre, the lighting, the footlights, the lighting from below, the contrast between performance and audience.

This is Daumier on the left hand side at this juxtaposition of the brightly lit stage and the illusion of what’s going on in the stage and the reality of the audience. Degas on the right hand side. And these are my final images, another theme that preoccupied Daumier through his painting career, painted many, many times was the story of Don Quixote. And I think, I imagine that actually this was a question of him actually identifying with the hero Don Quixote, certainly Daumier was a man who’d spent a lot of his life tilting at windmills.

Q&A and Comments

So let’s see where we are with questions. We’ve got some.

Resto list. Yeah, the Trambleu Well both Trambleu and Chartier, I wouldn’t say either would be, you’d go for particularly wonderful meals there are places where you could probably eat better. Although Trambleu is very respectable, very good quality, absolutely trad French bourgeois cuisine of a certain level. But it’s the atmosphere that’s so wonderful and on a much, much lower level economically, of course Chartier it’s the same.

Q: Why do you think Millet chose the studio of a painter with whom he obviously didn’t share approach or style at all? A: I can’t give you an answer to that, it’s a mystery to me really. But I think, you know, later, well he certainly had, that is true. He hadn’t really developed his own style, but I think right from the beginning was very clear he didn’t want that kind of slickness. You know, later on you’ve got somebody like, it may have been an economic necessity, it may have been a connection or a recommendation. Later on you’ve got somebody like Sargent coming to Paris who certainly looked around the different studios and picked the one that suited him best.

Q: Why is this a breakthrough? A: The breakthrough picture of, the one I thinking, the one I’m talking about is that I was talking about is “The Winnower”. It’s a breakthrough in lots of ways. First of all, it created a very powerful impact when it was shown at the Salon of 1848. And it’s also the first pic, you know, you can see this is the fully developed Millet, this is what he’s going to do for most of the rest of his career, which is to paint peasants in a monumental and heroic way. He hadn’t really got there until that painting. Many of Millet’s paintings have muted colours and I wonder if some of them, I think they always had very muted colours and I doubt whether cleaning would make an enormous difference to them.

For a modern explanation of “The Gleaners”. See Agnes Varda’s film “The Gleaners”. She’s a wonderful filmmaker. I haven’t seen that film. I will look out for it.

This is Lucy. I love this period of painting. I was lucky as a student was taught by a professor Francis Haskell. Yes. 'Cause I remember him too when I was at the Courtauld he came and gave lectures occasionally. I was studying French and history and my special paper was Baudelaire and the artist of his time. Yes.

Q: Is “The Gleaners” an example of social realism? I have done and would I consider a series on women painters? A: I’ve done several times actually, the old LJ CCC and for other people I’ve done a series on women painters. Yes, it’s certainly a possibility. All sorts of things we could do. Is it an example of social realism? Yes, I think it is. I mean, Millet is of course certainly an inspiration to later 20th century social realism that you found in socialist countries.

Q: Who were the patrons of Millet at the time of paintings like the “Faggot Gatherers”? Were they middle class or socialist? A: I think, my guess is they were probably both or at least left wing. You know, as I said, every painting that’s shown at the Salon at this time was given some kind of political interpretation. And whether the critic liked the painting or not would depend on the politics of the critic and of the newspaper that he worked for.

Q: What’s happening in the background of “The Sower”? A: Well, you can see a plough, can’t you in the distance.

Q: Where is a good museum to see these works of Millet? A: Well, London is very, very lucky to have the original and the best version of “The Winnower”. So you can see that one in London, Victoria Albert Museum has a couple of very good paintings by Millet in their painting section, which is always wonderful 'cause it’s always empty. I love going there. You’ll have lots of masterpieces to yourself if you go there, including a wonderful Degas. And of course the best place to see them would be the D'Orsay in Paris.

Q: How do you see the use of memory more than actual? A: I think you can, my feeling, I don’t know if I can tell you this in two minutes, but I think you can always go into a museum and look at a 19th century painting and say this was painted directly from reality or this was painted in the studio from memory. I think they have a totally, totally different look to them. But it would be, I don’t think I’ve got the time to really go into it. I’ll go into it maybe more when we get to Impressionism. 'Cause then it’s very relevant to that subject.

Daumier was certainly very, very prolific. Well I mean he had to be actually to earn a living. You know, he was turning out these lithographs at a fantastic rate.

The writers of the period were often of humbler origins. Balzac, yes, that’s probably, but you know, it is maybe just 'cause I’m a middle class person from Bognor Regis. But I always think, you know, actually, you know, everybody’s always very rude about middle classes and the bourgeoisie and nobody likes to be called bourgeois or middle class. But actually it’s since the 19th century it was certainly in the 19th century, maybe less recently, it’s the middle classes that have been the most productive classes, culturally.

Q: What would the humour in French be regarding a use of a pear? A: Oh, I think it’s funny. Don’t you? I think it’s quite funny to see the King of France gradually being transformed into a pear. Of course there’s that also a very famous piece of music by Satie, what is it? Three pieces in the form of a pear. I never quite got the joke of that one.

Q: Where would you place and how highly would you rate the work of Jules Breton? Who’s Gleaners predates? A: I think Breton is actually, he’s to me a slicker, more conventional artist. I think, you know, maybe haven’t stressed it enough that I think the great originality of Millet is this simplification of form, this radical elimination of any kind of unnecessary information or detail.

Breton is now relatively little known. That’s true. I think, yeah, I think it’s that he’s a more conservative, more conventional artist. Doesn’t mean say he’s not good.

Q: Was Daumier influenced by James Gillray? A: You know, that I don’t know. Gillray’s prints were known internationally in the 18th century. Goya knew them for instance. So I’d have to really do some research to find out whether Daumier knew them.

Somebody says, did he come to London? That I also do not know the answer to.

Q: Did Daumier’s work fetch high prices in the year after his death? A: There’s nothing better. You know, death is a great career move for any artist. Millet’s works. Well in both cases, their works were really going up in value right at the end of their lives. And Durand Ruelle organised an exhibition of Daumier in the 1870s, really right at the end, which sold well. But of course once an artist dies, then there aren’t going to be any more pictures and that’s always good for prices.

You’ve spelled the Millait like the English artist and I’m wondering whether you mean Millet, don’t you, not Millet. Millet was very widely collected towards the end of his life and then super collected just after he died.

Q: In that painting of three women picking up leftover pieces of wheat. Was one woman black? A: I don’t think so. I think it would be highly unlikely that you would find a black woman in rural France at this time. But maybe I’m wrong. Right.

The name of the painting of the children suckling, I’m not sure which painting you are referring to, was Edwin Markham’s poem, “The Man with a Hoe”, I don’t know it, sorry.

Q: Greetings from Richmond-upon-Thames’, modern film studios teach us about modern chiaroscuro lighting. When did this take root? A: Well, you know, of course in “Civilization”, Kenneth Clark made very interesting comparison between Caravaggio and the lighting in American film noir of the 1940s. So I think probably with Caravaggio, it’s probably in the beginning of the 17th century you start to get this very cinematic lighting.

I think that’s it. Thank you again, thank you for all your nice comments and that my next lecture, in case it’s a bit confusing to you, it’s going to be about really the cultural and political background to second half of the 19th century. The period 1848 to 1914, which is of course a period of enormous change. And that’s it I think for today.

• Yes. Thank you so much Patrick. And thank you again to everybody who joined us today and look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow. Thanks Patrick. Thanks everyone. Bye-bye.

• Thanks, Judi.