The National Gallery in London currently presents the first UK exhibition in nearly fifty years devoted to French painter Jean-François Millet, marking the 150th anniversary of the artist’s death. This intimate show celebrates the enduring relevance of Millet’s work on art history.

Titled Millet: Life on the Land, the exhibition gathers around thirteen works from across the country, including the Gallery’s own The Winnower (c. 1847–48), alongside an exceptional loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris of the iconic L’Angelus (1857–59) which inspired so many other artists including Salvador Dalí.

The sower, the woodcutter, a shepherd girl, these are the figures that defined Millet’s art, the painter of the peasants. Born into a farming family in Normandy, he moved in 1849 to the village of Barbizon, where he placed rural workers, often the poorest of 19th-century France, at the very center of his oeuvre. Millet knew these people and painted them with a realism stripped of sentimentality, offering a vision of dignity and force that was unprecedented at the time.

The remarkable L’Angelus, perhaps his most celebrated canvas, embodies this quiet power, is on view this exceptional show: a husband and wife, heads bowed in prayer, momentarily pause their labour as the light fades across the fields. The simplicity of the scene, heightened by a soft, filtered glow, captures both the hardship of rural life.

Millet’s influence was profound. Admired and copied by Van Gogh, and an inspiration to Impressionists and Post-Impressionists such as Degas and Pissarro, his work bridged tradition and modernity. His sensitivity to light and tone, combined with his commitment to everyday subjects, made him one of the most widely recognised artists of his time and cemented his reputation well into the 20th century.

It is an exhibition of beauty and restraint, and of an artist who captured the reality of rural labour with timeless humanity. The small format of the The Goose Girl at Gruchy, lent by Amgueddfa Cymru, Museum Wales, is another beautiful highlight, demonstrating Millet’s mastery at blending colours and depicting nature.

–

Images: L’Angélus, Jean-François Millet, 1857- 9 © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. Grand Palais Rmn / Patrice Schmidt and The Goose Girl at Gruchy, Jean-François Millet, 1854-6 © Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales