Jean-François Millet

Mitsukoshi Ltd., Japan
Acquired from the above by the present owner circa 1982

Millet drew this previously unrecorded compositional sketch of a shepherdess watching over her flock around 1860.  From the time Millet moved to Barbizon in 1849, he had been fascinated by the local shepherdesses who tended their small flocks through long, lonely days far from the village. Millet's early shepherdess works were often closely focused on a single figure, but by the late 1850s he turned his attention to large scale, finished drawings that placed the shepherdesses in distinctive landscapes characteristic of the Fontainebleau locale.

Millet did not regularly draw outdoors, preferring to study his subject carefully and then return to his studio to work it up into a composition.  But the unusual and charming repetition of the figure, studied from a slightly different angle, in the present work suggests that Millet may have drawn this scene on the site.