The artists' artist

So close was JeanFrançois Millet to the humble peasants he painted that he wore clogs and coarse clothing. He was steeped in nostalgia, yet inspired avant-garde artists from van Gogh to Salvador Dalí, finds Mary Miers

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LONG after 'peasant' became a derogatory term in Britain, paysan has remained acceptable in French for rural residents of the past, whether they are small independent farmers or landless labourers. In the mid 19th century, 75% of the population of France could be described as such-yet, until then, such people were largely ignored by artists, except as picturesque figures in the landscape, or, in the less elevated field of genre painting, sentimentalised rustics in anecdotal, often morally instructive, scenes.

Jean-François Millet was born into relatively well-to-do Normandy peasantry and he was proud of his heritage. His family worked a 50-acre farm and he grew up to hard physical work, as well as Bible reading, Latin and literature. From this conservative, devoutly Catholic background, he would become one of the most influential painters of rural realism, radically transforming the image of the agricultural worker in pictures that were both admired and scorned and which had a profound impact on painters from Vincent van Gogh to the Surrealist Salvador Dalí.

The young Millet was a pupil of the portrait painter Bon Dumouchel before moving to Paris to study art, where he joined the studio of Paul Delaroche. His early works → Included portraits, religious and pastoral scenes and a series of erotic nudes. In about 1847, a painting of two half-naked quarrymen straining to split a rock heralded a radical new direction. It was followed by