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Endnotes 1 Art Journal , 1875, p. 108. 2 Alfred Sensier, La vie et l’oeuvre de J.-F. Millet , ed. Paul Mantz, Paris 1881, p. 194. 3 The three Le Nain brothers were active during the seventeenth century in France: Antoine (c. 1600–1648), Louis (c. 1603–1648), and Mathieu (c. 1607–1677). 4 Letter from Millet to Sensier, February 1, 1851, published in ibid., p. 130. 5 T. Gautier, “Salon de 1850–51,” La Presse , March 15, 1851. 6 This is nowhere more apparent than in The Gleaners (1857, Mus é e d’Orsay, Paris). Gleaning was a centuries-old practice performed by the poorest members of rural society, who were granted permission to gather leftover scraps of wheat after the harvest. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, landowners began charging a fee for this privilege, further burdening the destitute. Millet depicted these stoic women in a noble fashion, with their solid, curving forms bathed in golden light, thus inviting us to see them in a sympathetic, humanist light. Still, the work offended critics such as Paul de St. Victor, who was stubbornly unmoved by Millet’s portrayal: “His three Gleaners have gigantic pretensions, they pose as the Three Fates of Poverty . . . their ugliness and their grossness unrelieved. These paupers . . . have too much pride.” Paul de Saint Victor, “Salon de 1857,” quoted in Griselda Pol- lock, Millet , London, 1977, p. 17. 7 Pissarro letter to Lucien Pissarro, May 2, 1887, reprinted in John Rewald, ed., Camille Pissarro, Letters to His Son, Lucien , p. 105. Cora Michael, Ph.D is an independent art historian. She was a former curator of drawings and prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and holds a B.A. in Art History from Vassar College, and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU.

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