Jean-François Millet, Le départ pour le travail, 1863, etching. Purchase, 1972 (15-030). Credit: Frances K. Smith
Exhibitions
The Nature of Work
Frances K. Smith Gallery
13 June - 19 December 2004
Nature was a rich source of inspiration for artists in 19th-century France, particularly for a group of landscapists known as the Barbizon School. Members of this group combined a range of allusions with nostalgia for the simple agrarian life to shape their impressions of the natural world. They viewed nature as a powerful force that animated all living things, from plants and animals to humankind. With the incursion of industry and urban expansion in the French countryside in the mid-19th century, they witnessed the erosion of nature, and sought to make it the focus of their art. In so doing, Barbizon School artists, such as Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), left their studios in Paris to travel through the provinces in search of natural subjects. With this travel came a fascination with the people who lived close to nature. For many artists, especially Millet, the depiction of the rural worker or 'peasant' became part of this reverence of nature.
As with Barbizon School artists, the portrayal of agrarian life was important to the work of Canadian artist Horatio Walker (1858-1938). In fact, contemporary critics called him the "American Millet" because of evident stylistic and thematic similarities. Walker's vision of rural Québec at the turn of the 20th century was characterised by a nostalgic view of the landscape and the peasant's role in it. While nostalgia for a pre-industrial past was integral to the work of Barbizon School artists, their images were often suffused with literary, biblical and even political meaning. Three monumental drawings by Walker and a selection of works on paper by Barbizon School artists from our permanent collection illuminate this range of meaning, and expound contemporary views on the state of nature and the relationship of the peasant and the artist to the natural world, or in other words the 'nature' of work.
Annabel Hanson