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signed "J. F. Millet" lower right- -black and white chalk laid down on paper 13 1/4 x 18 3/8 in. (33.7 x 46.7 cm.) unframed PROVENANCE Levy-Cremieu; sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, May 15, 1886 Monsieur 'L', 1887 (lent to Ecole des Beaux-Arts retrospective) Anon. Collector; sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, April 30, 1888 With Cottier, London and New York (circa 1902) Ames Family, Boston (circa 1920) EXHIBITED Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, "J. F.-Millet," 1887, no. 154 LITERATURE A. Alexandre and G. Geffroy, "Corot and Millet" (special issue of "The Studio"), London, Paris and New York, Winter 1902-1903, no. M 27 E. Haverkamp-Begemann and A. M. S. Logan, "European Drawings and Watercolors in the Yale University Art Gallery 1500-1900," New Haven, 1970, I, p. 89 (paraphrasing Robert L. Herbert, dates "Gardening" to 1857-60) A. R. Murphy, "Jean-Francois Millet" (exh. cat.), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984, p. 127 "Gardening," which probably dates to the end of the 1850s, is particularly interesting for Millet's use of a surprisingly free and sketch-like technique in a large, finished drawing, a foreshadowing of the more painterly style that would characterize Millet's work in the 1860s. Harsh and unexpected criticism of his exhibits at the Salons of 1857 ("The Gleaners") and 1859 ("Woman Pasturing her Cow"), combined with a financial recession, made it virtually impossible for Millet to sell his paintings during the last years of the 1850s. In response Millet turned his attention almost exclusively to drawings, for which he had slowly been developing a small circle of committed collectors. During the mid-1850s, he had finally brought his skills as a landscape craftsman into line with his well-honed abilities as a figure draughtsman, and for several years after 1858, he focused his creative powers on experiments with technique and with the addition of colored crayons and pastels to his black crayon drawings. "Gardening" is one of several scenes that pair different members of a peasant family in gardening or household chores within the compass of a vegetable garden or farmyard. Sensier, who acted as an agent for Millet during these years, encouraged him to take up more personal subject matter to offset the criticisms of his paintings and to reflect the more intimate nature of drawings themselves; and many of the compositions of the late 1850s were directly inspired by Millet's own family or by the activities of the lively 'kitchen gardens' that surrounded nearly all the homes of Barbizon, his own included. Particularly unusual in this scene of a gardener laying out seedlings while his wife hangs laundry behind him is Millet's effort to retain the freshness and seemingly random crayon marks of a quick sketch within a carefully thought-out and balanced composition. The garden fence and the farmhouse fade away along the edges of the drawing, the saplings and the garden bed are only roughly suggested, and the viewer's attention is held to the gardener and his wife by the strong foreshortening that unites them under the sheltering fruit tree. The drawing conveys the spirit of a glimpse into a private world spontaneously rendered. The existence of several preparatory drawings for "Gardening" reveals, however, how carefully Millet worked to compose the scene and to construct his principal figure, before finally executing the drawing in a very rapid, free manner. The Cabinet des dessins (Musee du Louvre) owns two compositional sketches, one showing the gardener alone and lacking the central tree, the second showing the gardener holding his spade as well as a plant, and accompanied by a woman and children in the background. Three figure studies exist for the gardener himself, all partial tracings with only minor differences: Kunsthalle, Bremen; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. We are grateful to Alexandra Murphy for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry. The Property of A NORTHEAST MUSEUM.