Jean-François MIllet

Mme J. F. Millet (and sold by the estate: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 24-25, 1894, lot 11)
Félix Gérard (acquired at the above sale)
Artemis Gallery, London
Private Collection, United States (and sold: Christie's, New York, May 5, 1998, lot 32)
Private Collection, New York (acquired at the above sale) 
Acquired in 2015 

Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Jean-François Millet, 1984, no. 152

Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, Millet raconté par lui-même, vol. III, Paris, 1921, pp. 97, 104, & 125
Robert L. Herbert, Jean-François Millet (exhibition catalogue), Grand Palais, Paris, 1975, p. 292

Charcoal and white chalk on canvas. This work is in very good condition. The work is unlined and stretched over the original wooden stretcher. The pigments appear to be rich and undisturbed. Some tape residue is present around the edges of the stretcher, not visible when framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Chasse aux oiseaux par lumière des torches is one of the last works of Jean-François Millet, the under-drawing of an unfinished painting transformed by the dying artist into an astonishing creation of singular intensity. The composition of Chasse aux oiseaux par lumière des torches records an event that had been buried in Millet’s memory since his childhood in Normandy, some fifty years before; but it is the gestural force with which Millet pulled his figures out of a swirl of light and energy that gives the work such emotional power.

From William Low, a young American painter who visited Millet in his Barbizon studio during 1873-74, we learn that Chasse aux oiseaux par lumière des torches (along with the related painting, Bird's-Nesters, 1874, Philadelphia Museum of Art, which reverses the composition, see fig. 1) depicts a scene out of the artist’s early childhood on the Cotentin coast of Normandy. Millet spoke to Low of going out at night with other peasants of his tiny Gruchy hamlet to hunt the flocks of wild pigeons that migrated across the Channel. Carrying great torches to blind the startled birds, and swinging heavy clubs to stun them, the older men brought down the pigeons which children scrambling on the ground gathered up into sacks. For peasants living a hard existence, this communal hunt was one of the few sources of meat in a limited diet.

Without Low’s testament for McClure’s Magazine (May 1896), it would be very difficult to know what to make of Chasse aux oiseaux par lumière des torches. The maelstrom of flickering torches, waving clubs, and spinning hunters is quite unlike anything else in the solid, stable rural world of Millet’s art. For thirty-five years he had struggled to adapt traditional French artistic values emphasizing sculptural forms and clear narrative unity to the untraditional subjects of French peasant life. Side by side with Chasse aux oiseaux par lumière des torches, Millet worked as well on the monumental Haystacks of The Metropolitan Museum of Art during the last months of his life. Yet in the present work, the certainties and spatial clarity of those works are set aside for an impenetrable space of shifting light and shadow in which two archetypal Millet subjects, the hard-working peasant and the beautiful birds of the field, come into direct and uneven conflict. As he faced his own death, Millet raged against the inevitability of fate and the blindness that commands so many of man’s actions.

Millet worked out the positions of the figures in numerous small pen and ink sketches (coll. Cabinet des dessins, The Louvre, Paris; and others now lost) and in two fuller pencil and crayon compositions (Indianapolis Museum of Art and the London art market, 1980s) that record the fury with which Millet slashed in the flickering light of the background. Another under-drawing on canvas shows the figures in a smaller, more compact space.

Fig. 1 Jean-François Millet, Bird's-Nesters, 1874, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art