Brown ink and watercolour, Landscape with farm buildings, Jean-François Millet, French school, 1866-68

A landscape with farm buildings along the horizon partially hidden by high fields and trees

Purchased on the 17th of June 1882 by Constantine Alexander Ionides for £68 together with CAI.50, CAI.52, and CAI.53; bequethed to the V&A in 1901.

This drawing, by Jean-François Millet, was made in the surrounding countryside of Vichy, a city in the central region of France, where the artist 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 landscape, 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.

This watercolour presents an expressive, densely foliaged landscape. 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, barely visible farm houses, roofed with small tiles indicative to the farming region of Vichy, and fields lined with dark plow marks are representations of peasant labour which 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, the attraction to nature and the rendering of atmospheric effects are typical of the Barbizon School, of which he was a founding member.

CAI.51