Jean-François Millet

Marc  Lévy-Crémieu (and sold: his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 15, 1886)
Monsieur  ‘L’ , 1887
Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 30, 1888
Cottier, London and New York (by 1902)
Frederick Lothrop Ames, Boston
A Northeast Museum (and sold, Christie’s, New York, October 12, 1993, lot 65, illustrated)

Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, J.F. Millet, 1887,  no. 154

Arsène Alexandre and Gustave Geffroy, Corot and Millet (special issue, The Studio, London, Winter 1902-03), illustrated pl. M-27
Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann and Anne-Marie S. Logan, European Drawings and Watercolors in the Yale University Art Gallery 1500-1900, New Haven, 1970, vol. 1,  p. 89
Alexandra R. Murphy, Jean-François Millet, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 28 - July 1, 1984, p. 127

Paper laid down on paper; hinged to mat along top. Visible spots of foxing around woman hanging laundry as visible in the catalogue image, along with a fly speck in the tree branches at left.
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.

Between Laveuses à la fontaine and Le Jardinage (lot 79) lies nearly a decade of life in Barbizon for Millet as well as several years of very mixed fortunes for the artist.  Although his Salon paintings featuring sowers and harvesting peasants had met with growing success during the early years of the 1850s, by 1857 the social climate had changed. His Gleaners faced disdain and rejection.  Millet found himself struggling to sell any paintings at all and he turned to drawings as the principal focus of his efforts.  His friend, later biographer, Alfred Sensier acted as Millet’s agent in Paris and was tasked with taking drawings from dealer to dealer or pressing past patrons to commission new works.  In that role, Sensier repeatedly encouraged Millet to draw from his own life and his family’s activities in order to create works that would appeal to a wider audience.  Le Jardinage, which belongs to that campaign to expand his repertoire, is set in a garden that closely resembles the fruit and vegetable patch in which Millet labored every morning.  Le Jardinage pairs a husband and wife working at separate but complementary family tasks, a theme that became more frequent in Millet’s paintings as well. (The compositional sketch of a mother feeding her children that appears later in this sale (lot 83 recto) is a contemporary preparation for a painting featuring a mother feeding children while a father gardens deep in the background).

As the ambiance became more important in Millet’s drawings, his landscape skills expanded considerably.  Still working in the black crayon he used throughout his life, Millet makes greater use of stumping in Le Jardinage to create softer textures, and strategically adds heavy white chalk to draw the viewer’s eye back to the secondary scene of the village housewife hanging laundry.