Fanfare for the common man
Salt of the earth “Reckoning with Millet’s ‘Man with a Hoe’ 1863-1900,” edited by Scott Allan (Getty Publications, 123 pp, $26.95) by Bondo Wyszpolski Scott Allan doesn’t waste any time rolling up his sleeves: “For a time around the turn of the twentieth century, ‘Man with a Hoe’ would be the most renowned European painting in California.” This monograph, mercifully not long, shadows the picture’s controversial reception in Paris, its redemption, and a later tug of war about human nature and whether it can be deciphered in the shape, size, and slope of one’s forehead. Jean-François Millet was born near Gréville-Hague, France, in 1814, and died in Barbizon in 1875. He’s considered one of the founders of the Barbizon school of painting, along with Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, Camille Corot and others. “Man with a Hoe” was acquired by the Getty Museum in 1985, and as a footnote to Allan’s comment above it has lost much of its former prestige. And thus, perhaps, we have the “reckoning,” after which I hope they’ll tuck it back into bed (I like Millet as much as I like Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, which is to say not much, although it’s easy to see the appeal of such…
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