"The Suicide" is like a chord on a violin. But
it is when we come to speak of the "Fontainebleau Group," in especial, I
think, that the aesthetic susceptibility characteristic of the latter
half of the nineteenth century feels, to borrow M. Taine's introduction
to his lectures on "The Ideal in Art," that the subject is one only to
be treated in poetry.
Of the noblest of all so-called "schools," Millet is perhaps the most
popular member. His popularity is in great part, certainly, due to his
literary side, to the sentiment which pervades, which drenches, one may
say, all his later work--his work after he had, on overhearing himself
characterized as a painter of naked women, betaken himself to his true
subject, the French peasant. A literary, and a very powerful literary
side, Millet undoubtedly has; and instead of being a weakness in him it
is a power. His sentimental appeal is far from being surplusage, but, as
is not I think popularly appreciated, it is subordinate, and the fact
of its subordination gives it what potency it has.
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