William Morris Hunt: Studies with Millet

"Shepherdess with Her Flock and Dog" by Jean-Francois Millet

William Morris Hunt said: "I bought as much of Millet's work as I could, and after a while the idea was started in Paris that a rich Englishman was buying up all his pictures. The people in the city were alarmed and began to come to Barbizon and get from him what they could. It will give you some idea of the low prices at which his work was then sold to know that for "The Sheep Shearers, the most expensive picture of his which I bought, I gave ninety dollars.

When I thought that the picture was done - when anyone would have thought so, he was still dissatisfied with the girl's left hand which pulls back the fleece from the shears. He thought that it had not the right action, so he kept it ten days longer. Whenever I went to see him he was still at work upon it. I asked him why he put no wrinkles or markings into the girl's cap. He said because he was 'trying to make it look like a tea-rose leaf.' And that was the man whom the critics call 'careless and slovenly'!

He had so little money in his life that he never owned a hundred-dollar bill until I gave him the money for one of his pictures. It was at the exhibition, and the government proposed to buy it for about fifty cents. When the exhibition was over I carried it off in its big frame and took a friend to look at it and who said, "That's little enough for it! and took it. When I handed the purchase price to him he did not say much, but he told me next day that he could not try to thank me, but I might like to know that he had never before had a hundred-dollar bill."   

"You ask if he painted much out-of-doors. He used to take walks and look at things, and study them in that way. We would start out together and perhaps come to a cart by the roadside. We would sit down, and he would make me notice how it sagged, how the light fell upon the wheels, and all sorts of things about it. Anything was interesting to him. We would be out all the afternoon, and perhaps walk no more than half a dozen roads.

Sometimes we would go up to Paris, to the Louvre, and he would lead me up to a Mantegna or an Albert Durer, and show me what were the great things. After Mantegna he would say, "Now where's your Titian?" He always said that he did not care to go to Rome. He could see great pictures enough in the Louvre. Rembrandt's 'Supper at Emmaus' was an especial favorite of Millet.

The companionship of this great painter and earnest man had a lasting effect. Hunt developed an intense power of sympathy which largely helped to make him the remarkable artist which he was to become. Whatever he loved, he loved intensely. Whatever interested him moved him deeply. His work grew in strength, seriousness and beauty. He had all the elements of a great painter."

To be continued

(Excerpts from Helen Mary Knowlton's book "The Art-Life of William Morris Hunt.)