Jean-François Millet: "To tell the truth, peasant subjects suit my nature best.."

• "Art will never come except from some small disregarded corner where an isolated and inspired man is studying the mysteries of nature".

• "L'arte non verrà mai se non da qualche piccolo angolo trascurato dove un uomo isolato e ispirato sta studiando i misteri della natura".

• "It is the treating of the commonplace with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power".

• "The most joyful thing I know is the peace, the silence that one enjoys in the woods or on the tilled lands".

• "Beauty does not lie in the face. It lies in the harmony between a person and his or her industry. Beauty is expression. When I paint a mother I try to render her beautiful by the mere look she gives her child".

• "La bellezza non sta nel viso. Sta nell'armonia tra una persona e il suo settore. La bellezza è espressione. Quando dipingo una madre cerco di renderla bella solo per lo sguardo che rivolge al suo bambino".

• "A photograph is analogous to a plaster cast taken from life, which is always inferior to a good statue".

• "I want to put strongly and completely all that is necessary, for things weakly said might as well not be said at all".

• "I remember being awakened one morning by voices in the room where I slept. There was a whizzing sound which made itself heard between the voices now and then. It was the sound of spinning-wheels, and the voices were those of women spinning and carding wool. The dust of the room danced in a ray of sunshine which shone through the high narrow window that lighted the room".

• "I came to Paris with all my ideas of art fixed, and I have never found it necessary to change them. I have been more or less in love with this master, or that method in art, but I have not modified any fundamental opinions. You have seen my first drawing, made at home without a master, without a model, without a guide. I have never done anything different since. You have never seen me paint except in a low tone; demi-teinte [half-tone] is necessary to me in order to sharpen my eyes and clear my thoughts, - it has been my best teacher".

• "In the morning we saw that the sea was rough, and people said there would be trouble.... Fifty men volunteered to go at once, and followed the old sailor without a word. We descended the cliffs to the beach, and there we saw a terrible sight : several vessels rushing, one after the other, at fearful speed, upon our rocks. Our men put three boats out to sea, but before they had rowed ten strokes one boat sank, another was upset by a huge breaker, while a third was thrown upon the beach.... The sea threw up hundreds of corpses, as well as quantities of cargo... Then came a fourth, fifth and sixth vessel, all of which were lost with their crew and cargo alike, upon the rocks. The tempest was furious... The next morning.... As I was passing by a hollow in the cliff, I saw a large sail spread, as I thought, over a bale of merchandise. I lifted the sail and saw a heap of corpses. I was so frightened that I ran home, and found my mother and grandmother on their knees, praying for the shipwrecked sailors".

• "To tell the truth, peasant subjects suit my nature best, for I must confess, at the risk of your taking me to be a Socialist, that the human side is what touches me most in art... The joyous side never shows itself to me; I know not if it exists, but I have never seen it. The gayest thing I know is the calm, the silence, which are so delicious, both in the forest and in the cultivated fields, whether the soil is good for culture or not. You will confess that it always gives you a very dreamy sensation, and that the dream is a sad one, although often very delicious".

• "A dire il vero, i soggetti contadini si adattano meglio alla mia natura, perché devo confessare, a rischio che tu mi prenda per socialista, che il lato umano è ciò che mi tocca di più nell'arte... Il lato gioioso non mi si mostra mai; non so se esista, ma non l'ho mai visto. La cosa più allegra che conosco è la calma, il silenzio, che sono così deliziosi, sia nella foresta che nei campi coltivati, che il terreno sia buono per la cultura o no. Confesserai che ti dà sempre una sensazione molto sognante, e che il sogno è triste, sebbene spesso molto delizioso".

• "For the first [his very first time in Paris], I went to a little hotel, where I spent the night in a sort of nightmare, in which I saw my home, full of melancholy, with my mother, grandmother, and sister spinning in the evening, weeping and thinking of me, praying that I should escape the perdition of Paris.

Then the evil demon drove me on before wonderful pictures, which seemed so beautiful, so brilliant, that it appeared to me they took fire and vanished in a heavenly cloud...

Finally, without knowing how, I found myself [during one of his his first days in Paris] on the Pont Neuf, from which I saw a magnificent building which I thought must be the Louvre, from the descriptions I had heard of it.

I went to it, and mounted the great stairway with a beating heart. At last one great object of my life was attained. I had imagined correctly what I should see.

It seemed to me that I was in a world of friends [the paintings of the old masters], in a family where all that I beheld was the reality of my dreams".

• "I work like a gang of slaves; the day seems five months long. My wish to make a winter landscape has become a fixed idea. I want to do a sheep picture and have all sorts of projects in my head. If you could see how beautiful the forest is!

I rush there at the end of the day, after my work, and I come back every time crushed. It is so calm, such a terrible grandeur, that I find myself really frightened.

I don't know what those fellows, the trees, are saying to each other.... we don't know their language, that is all; but I am quite sure of this - they do not make puns!.... Send [me] 3 burnt sienna, 2 raw ditto, 3 Naples's yellow, 1 burnt Italian earth, 2 yellow ocher, 2 burnt umber, 1 bottle of raw oil".

• "You are sitting under the trees, feeling all the ease, all the tranquility that can possibly be enjoyed; you see some poor figure laden with a faggot come turning out of some little path. The unexpected and always striking way in which this figure appears to you carries your mind instantly to the sadness of human life...

In tilled lands you see these figures digging and delving. From time to time you see one straighten his loins and wipe his forehead with the back of his hand.

Is this the gay frolicsome work in which some people would have us believe? Yet here for me is the real humanity, the great poetry".