Watercolour sketch by Jean François Millet, The farm on a hill, French School, 1866-68

Watercolour sketch of a hilly landscape with a farmhouse on the horizon and a large tree at the left.

Purchased on the 17th of June 1882 by Constantine Alexander Ionides for £68 together with CAI.51, CAI.52, and CAI.53; bequethed to the V&A in 1901.

This drawing was made in the surrounding countryside of Vichy, a city in the central region of France, where the artist Jean-François Millet used to stay in the early summer. An inscription in pen on the lower left of the darwing reads, ‘environs de Cusset, Ferme sur les hauteurs de l'ardoisière’ while a visit to Cusset is recorded in a letter by Millet from June 1866 (Moreau-Nélaton, Millet raconté par lui-même, vol. III, 1921, p. 10), but doubtless he went there on numerous occasions during his stay in Vichy.

Although landscapes without figures are rare in Millet's work, the artist produced many sketches of this type while staying at Vichy between 1866 and 1868. He would rent a carriage to explore the surrounding countryside, in particular the hilly uplands above Cusset, stopping frequently to make rapid pencil or ink drawings in small sketchbooks. These sketches were later re-worked in the studio when the artist added watercolour. The present work contains varying notations, done in pencil, relating to landscape features and colours. This writing is visible beneath the washes of watercolour, further suggesting that the artist added the watercolour some time after he drew his subject.

In the drawing, Millet experimented with dark lines, creating areas of carved earth and foliage of differing sizes to form a receeding viewpoint. Millet was a founding member of the Barbizon school of painting whose members also included Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, and Charles-François Daubigny. The group advocated a push toward Naturalism and utilized muted tonalities, looseness, and soft rendurings.

This watercolour sketch is one of four landscapes in the V&A collection by the French painter Jean-François Millet. The work displays his characteristic lightness of touch, and muted tonalities, that stayed with him throughout his life, whereas the attraction to nature and the rendering of atmospheric effects are typical of the Barbizon School, of which he was a founding member.

CAI.50