Jean-François Millet

Oliver Ames, Boston (by 1908)
Mrs. Oliver Ames, by descent from the above (and sold, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 12 October 1946, lot 38)
Private Collection, New York
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, February 27, 1982, lot 32, illustrated
Private collection
Sale: Christie's, New York, October 28, 2008, lot 169, illustrated
Acquired from the above sale 

Boston, Copley Society, The French School of 1830, 1908, no. 98 (as Les Bergères Assises)
Tokyo, Bunkamura Museum of Art; Kyoto, Municipal Museum of Art; and Kofu, Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Jean-François Millet, 1991, no. 82, illustrated
Kofu, Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, J.F. Millet, the Barbizon Artists and the Renewal of the Rural Tradition, 1998, no. IV-12, illustrated

The following condition report was kindly provided by Alvarez Fine Art Services, Inc.: Overall this black conte crayon and chalk on paper is in good condition and does not present planar distortions. The paper is mounted to an acid free paper secondary support which is hinged in three places along the top edge. In the bottom right corner above the signature some creases exist which are original to the paper before execution. Along the left edge there are some minor repaired breaks in the paper of no real consequence. There is also a small paper insert, 1/2" in diameter, three inches down from the top edge and one inch from the left edge. Visually, the paper is mildly oxidized from contact with acidic material and a natural process of aging due to light exposure. The left edge of the paper shows a mild mat line from a previous mat, as well as some blending of the repairs. Otherwise the pigments appear to be rich and undisturbed.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Two Shepherdesses and their Flock was drawn by Jean-François Millet around 1854-58 and reflects both his long-standing interest in the lives of the shepherdesses working on the outskirts of Barbizon, and his on-going effort to develop a distinctly personal drawing style suitable to the rural subject matter that so absorbed his attentions.

Millet had grown up in the bocage country of northern Normandy, where sheep and cows grazed unattended in the hedgerow-enclosed fields, requiring the attention of their owners only when being moved from field to field or when sheep were brought in for shearing. In Barbizon, a very different farming economy defined by broad open wheat fields required that both cows and sheep be kept to the fallow lands or wooded edges of the great Forest of Fontainebleau. For most of the families among whom Millet had been living since 1849, it fell to a younger daughter to spend endless hours, every day, tending the family's small flocks or solitary cow, foregoing not only schooling but also much of the social interaction of work closer to home. Millet was already the father of three daughters by 1854 (with a fourth born in 1856); and as an artist always sympathetic to the work and the lives of the women in his own family and the surrounding community, he studied the Barbizon shepherdesses with great interest, his growing understanding of their customs bringing many insights into the structure and problems of his adopted homeland. In drawings and paintings before Two Shepherdesses and their Flock, Millet captured the boredom and isolation of their long days, the chilling winds and burning sun, the day-dreaming and knitting that measured their lives. Two Shepherdesses and their Flock introduces a more appealing note, with two young village girls sharing confidences while a dog watches their blended flocks. The shepherdess who sits on the ground, her knee clasped in her hands, appears to offer advice or counsel to her more demure companion sitting on the embankment, whose wistful downward gaze suggests faraway thoughts.

Millet was a great draftsman before he became a great painter, and it had always been his practice to prepare his paintings with numerous compositional sketches and many careful studies from life. As drawing for its own sake became crucially important to him in the mid-1850s, he experimented with numerous methods of mark-making and shading, exploiting the texturing flexibility of the black crayons that were his favorite medium. The combination of careful figure studies in Two Shepherdesses and their Flock with quicker, more cursory shaping of the milling sheep and rapid shading for the woodland background reflects both Millet's natural interests and his determination to establish a lively style suitable to his subjects.

A study for the shepherdess seated on the embankment belongs to the Boymans Museum, Rotterdam; and a second version of Two Shepherdesses and their Flock, similar in size and detail, belongs to the Canton Art Institute, Canton, Ohio.

We would like to thank Alexandra R. Murphy for confirming the authenticity of this lot and for writing this catalogue entry.