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Peasants Going to Work

ter suited his nature best & he hoped this would not make people stamp him a socialist. It is a question bfrom [[from]] which direction he feared the comment must. When they saw the painting of The Man with the Hoe, the socialists thought Millet was on their side, but to quote another Pissarro letter, "assuming that this artist who had undergone so much suffering, this peasant of genius who had expressed the sadness of peasant life, would necessarily have to be in agreement with their ideas." Not at all. More & more indignant disavowals fromthe [[from the]] great painter! "What do you think of that? I was not much surprised. He was just a bit too Biblical. Another one of those blind men, leaders or followers, who unconscious of the march of modern ideas defend the idea without knowing it despite themselves! "Isn't this a strange phenomenon? For a long time now I have been struck by the unconsciousness of the intellectuals."

At first he had had his difficulties in getting the bourgeois public to recognise the charm in such uncouth subjects as these Peasants Going to Work. He concludes his statement on leaving Paris for Fontainbleau, "You reproach me with insensibility to charm; why, I open your eyes to that which you do not perceive, but which is none the less real, the dramatic."

That is rather a drawing room apology for life but Millet was at any rate sufficiently discontent in Paris to retreat to the Forest of Fontaibleau & with the other back to naturists, tovestablish [[to establish]] the Barbizon school. Meanwhile the public got its eyes open to the charm &cdrama [[drama]] of peasantry.