Brown ink and watercolour, Hilly landscape with trees, Jean-François Millet, French School, 1866-68

Watercolour sketch of a hilly landscape with clumps of trees in olive green and brown colours.

Purchased on the 17th of June 1882 by Constantine Alexander Ionides for £68 together with CAI.50, CAI.51, 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 artist Jean-François Millet used to stay in the early summer. Millet 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, 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.

Landscapes without figures are rare in Millet's work, however, the wildness of this environment is tamed through subtle elements of human presence. For instance, beyond the foliage and a disused quarry, the hills are divided into farmed fields with a small house on the left skyline. These representations of peasant labour were common subjects for Millet, who praised the roles of labourers and illustrated the lowerclass with dignity.

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 attacntion to nature and the rendering of atmospheric effects are typical of the Barbizon School, of which he was a founding member.

CAI.52