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Lot Essay
Previously unknown, The Blacksmith and His Bride is an important new addition to the oeuvre of Jean-François Millet, one of only a handful of finished drawings that can be dated to the artist's crucial years in Paris around the Revolution of 1848. Millet had returned to the city in late 1845 as a portraitist and a painter of idyllic genre scenes, an accomplished artist working in a distinctly Romantic mode. The discovery of The Blacksmith and his Bride - which can be dated to 1847-48 by the figure types and by the sweeping crayon strokes that establish the shadowy forge interior - provides a vital document of Millet's turn toward realistic subject matter and the lives of urban workers, the prelude to his definitive move to Barbizon in 1849.
The blacksmith was an ubiquitous figure in a vast city that relied on all manner of wheeled vehicles to move people and merchandise; and during the decades of social and economic realignment that produced the 1848 uprising, blacksmiths were celebrated in poetry and in song as strong, quiet heroes of the lower classes. With the central contrast of a confident, square-shouldered smith stepping forward to present a diffident young woman, Millet may be illustrating some now-lost folk talk or popular song; or he may simply be celebrating the male-female partnership so crucial to the survival of working families (a major Millet theme better known to us through paintings such as Potato Planters of 1862).
The signature at lower right, which uses a lower case 'f' and conjoint 'l's, differs from Millet's customary signature in later years. That may simply be a reflection of the many transitions in his rapidly maturing art around 1848; or it is possible the signature was added by a knowledgeable, later hand.
We are grateful to Alexandra R. Murphy for preparing this catalogue entry.
The blacksmith was an ubiquitous figure in a vast city that relied on all manner of wheeled vehicles to move people and merchandise; and during the decades of social and economic realignment that produced the 1848 uprising, blacksmiths were celebrated in poetry and in song as strong, quiet heroes of the lower classes. With the central contrast of a confident, square-shouldered smith stepping forward to present a diffident young woman, Millet may be illustrating some now-lost folk talk or popular song; or he may simply be celebrating the male-female partnership so crucial to the survival of working families (a major Millet theme better known to us through paintings such as Potato Planters of 1862).
The signature at lower right, which uses a lower case 'f' and conjoint 'l's, differs from Millet's customary signature in later years. That may simply be a reflection of the many transitions in his rapidly maturing art around 1848; or it is possible the signature was added by a knowledgeable, later hand.
We are grateful to Alexandra R. Murphy for preparing this catalogue entry.