Jean-François Millet

Ernest May (and sold: his sale; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, June 4, 1890, lot 84, illustrated)
Arnold & Tripp, London
Lebouef de Montgermont (a pseudonym) (and sold: his sale; Galerie Georges Petit, June 16-19, 1919, lot 146, illustrated)
M. Knoedler & Co., New York
Mrs. George A. Martin, Cleveland, Ohio (and sold; her sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, October 18-19, 1946, lot 315, illustrated)Jill Newhouse, New York (in 1989)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1990

 

New London, Connecticut, Lyman Allyn Museum, 1936
Springfield, Massachusetts, Museum of Art, 1938-39
Saratoga Springs, Skidmore College, Modern French Paintings and Drawings, 1942, no. 30
Tokyo, Bunkamura Museum of Art; Kyoto, Municipal Museum of Art; and Kofu, Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Jean-François Millet, 1991, no. 85, illustrated
Nagoya, City Art Museum; Morioka, Iwate Museum of Art; Hiroshima, Museum of Art, Van Gogh, Millet and the Barbizon Artists, 2004, no. 39, illustrated

Romain Rolland, Millet, London, n.d. (1902), p. 173, illustrated
Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, Millet raconté par lui-même, Paris, 1921, vol. II, p. 37, fig. 115, illustrated
Robert Herbert, Jean-François Millet, exh. cat., Paris, 1975, note, p. 159
Alexandra Murphy, Jean-François Millet, exh. cat., Boston, 1984, mentioned under "Related Works" p. 175

The following condition report was kindly provided by Alvarez Fine Art Services, Inc.: This work on paper is in good structural condition without any observable tears, losses or planar distortions. Visually, however, the paper shows signs of previous contact with acidic materials or support. This is evidenced by areas of darkened tonality, amorphous in shape and of debatable origin. Currently the paper is laid upon a secondary support with an adhesive at each edge approximately 5/8" all around while the rest is loose and free of glue residue. Otherwise the drawing appears to be clean of any disturbance and the medium appears fresh. With the proper treatment this piece may be stabilized both structurally and visually, bringing the drawing closer to its original state.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Tilling the earth, the practice of breaking open the soil in preparation for sowing seed, has been an archetype for mankind's endless struggle to earn one's daily bread at least since the composition of the book of Genesis.  For Jean-François Millet, the theme of two men digging in tandem was one of a handful of laboring scenes that particularly consumed him and to which he repeatedly returned throughout his career.  Les deux bêcheurs (so-called for the distinctive bêche or flat-bladed spade used for cutting hard ground in France) was drawn by Millet about 1856 or 1857, as the final drawing in a long series of preparatory sketches and studies that led to both this finished work and to the related etching that Millet produced concurrently.  During the mid-1860s, Millet took up the composition once again, beginning a painting left unfinished at his death and a large pastel, Two Men Turning over the Soil, for his patron Gavet which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Millet began drawing a solitary figure turning over the soil during the late 1840s, just before the Revolution of 1848.  Around the time he moved his family to Barbizon in 1849, he seems to have recognized the added possibilities that came with pairing two men digging whose gestures might be visually linked.  Millet could have noticed such figures in the far background of Poussin's Landscape with Polyphemus (St. Petersburg, The Hermitage) which he would have known through prints -- he greatly admired Poussin -- or he may equally well have witnessed a similar sight around the edges of his Barbizon village.  However he began the composition, Millet explored various configurations of two men digging through a process of nearly twenty sketches and studies, shifting and refining their poses until he had balanced their gestures in such a way that the opposed stretching and pushing movements appear to flow from one figure to another. By emphasizing the repetitive strain of the difficult task and setting his bêcheurs to work against the vast spread of the Barbizon Plain, Millet called attention to the cheapness of human life in such a bountiful landscape, for his two men digging are locked in the mindless task which had long ago been given over to plows and animals by other farming communities.  Les Bêcheurs forms a kind of male counterpoint to Millet's imagery of women gleaning, which he was developing simultaneously, as an equivalent indictment of the harshness of life for the poorest members of the French economy. 

It is this drawing by Millet that so absorbed the attention of Vincent Van Gogh and which he copied in 1880 for a drawing of Les Bêcheurs now in the Kröller-Muller Museum, Otterlo and which he returned to in 1889 for his painting of the same theme (Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum).  A photograph of the drawing by Braun, lightly squared for transfer, was found in Van Gogh's studio and now belongs to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  Earlier, Vincent had repeatedly pressed his brother Theo to try to acquire a print of Millet's etching based on this drawing.