{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O17821"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O17821/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2025PG7472/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2025PG7472/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2025PG7472","copyright":"© Victoria & Albert Museum","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006BB5070","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006BD2144","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006AM2610","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006AM2586","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006AM2585","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2017KE3984","copyright":"©Victoria & Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2017KE3985","copyright":"©Victoria & Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2019MA7447","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2023NL3315","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2023NL3316","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2023NL3317","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2023NL3319","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2023NL3321","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O17821/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O17821","accessionNumber":"CAI.47","objectType":"Oil painting","titles":[{"title":"The Wood Sawyers","type":""},{"title":"Les scieurs de long","type":""}],"summaryDescription":"Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) was born in Normandy and first trained with a local portrait painter, Bon Du Mouchel (1807-1846), and later in Cherbourg with Lucien-Théophile Langlois (1803-1845), a pupil of Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835). In Paris, he then entered the atelier of the history painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856). He first specialised in portraiture and then moved towards the naturalistic style with peasant scenes for which he became best known. \r\n\r\nThis painting is a fine example of Millet's peasants scenes for which he is best known. It depicts two men sawing a large trunk while another is chopping trees in the background. Although considered as a member of the Barbizon school for its technical approach of the rendering of light and colours, Millet favoured figures paintings to landscapes. His rural scenes are taken for the contemporary reality and are often interpreted as a reaction against a society that was becoming more and more bourgeois thanks to the industrial revolution.","physicalDescription":"Two figures holding either end of a wood saw are sawing a large tree trunk; a third figure chopping trees in the background.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Millet, Jean-François","id":"A2296"},"association":{"text":"artist","id":"AAT25103"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"oil paint","id":"AAT15050"},{"text":"canvas","id":"AAT14078"}],"techniques":[{"text":"oil painting","id":"AAT178684"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"oil on canvas","categories":[{"text":"Paintings","id":"THES48917"}],"styles":[{"text":"French School","id":"x31263"},{"text":"Barbizon School","id":"x31574"}],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":["2025PG7472","2006BB5070","2006BD2144","2006AM2610","2006AM2586","2006AM2585","2017KE3984","2017KE3985","2019MA7447","2023NL3315","2023NL3316","2023NL3317","2023NL3319","2023NL3321"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"81","id":"THES49713"},"free":"","case":"WEST WALL","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"oil paintings","id":"AAT33799"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"France","id":"x28849"},"association":{"text":"painted","id":"x30138"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1850- 1852","earliest":"1850-01-01","latest":"1852-12-31"},"association":{"text":"painted","id":"x30138"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"57","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"estimate","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"81","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"estimate","note":""},{"dimension":"Weight","value":"31","unit":"kg","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"with frame","note":""},{"dimension":"Height","value":"95.5","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"frame","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"119.5","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"frame","note":""},{"dimension":"Depth","value":"14","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"frame","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"Dimensions taken from C.M. Kauffmann, <i>Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, II. 1800-1900</i>, London, 1973.","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"This painting was purchased under the title Les Bûcherons by art dealers Paul Durand-Ruel and Hector Brame in December 1866 from collector (Alfred?) Feydeau; sold to a collector named Pointel in November 1869 (Durand-Ruel stockbook 1868-73, no. 10,084); repurchased by Durand-Ruel that same month as sole owner (Durand-Ruel stockbook 1868-73, no. 473); exhibited as Wood cutters in a French forest at the ‘Second Exhibition of The Society of French Artists’ organised by the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel at his London gallery in 1871; probably bought from Durand-Ruel by Constantine Ionides; listed in the inventory of his collection (private collection) in November 1881, with a valuation of £1200; bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides, 1900.\n\r\nThe address 51 Richmond Gardens, home of the poet and art critic William Ernest Henley is on the back of the picture and it was previously thought this painting belonged to him. Henley wrote Jean-François Millet: twenty etchings and woodcuts reproduced in fac-simile and a biographical notice (1881) in which this painting surprisingly does not figure, and was also the author of the catalogue of the French and Dutch Loan Collection exhibition at the Edinburgh International Exhibition of 1886. However, Henley did not live at this Richmond Gardens address until the early 1880s, by which time the painting was already in the Ionides collection. Henley was acquainted with Ionides (cf. letter from Henley to Ionides,  13.06.1883, NAL :86.ZZ.182, MSL/2006/132).and published an article in The Magazine of Art about the Ionides collection in 1884 which featured The Wood Sawyers, which he had photographed the year before. This may explain the address on the back.\r\nSee Simon Kelly and Andrew Watson, ‘The Origins of the Taste for Barbizon Painting in Britain: Paul Duran-Ruel’s Exhibitions of the Society of French Artists’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, vol. 23 no. 2, Autumn 2024 (https://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/autumn24/kelly-watson-on-paul-durand-ruels-exhibitions-of-the-society-of-french-artists), particularly footnote no. 105, for further discussion of the provenance of this picture. \r\n\nHistorical significance: This painting is a fine example of Millet’s peasant scenes executed in a free, broad technique characteristic of the Barbizon school. The present painting depicts two wood sawyers seen from the back while a strong contrast of light and shade emphasizes the strain of the figures to cut the wood while a third figure chops trees in the background.\r\nThere are two preparatory drawings in black chalk for this composition: one is in the Musée Bonnat, Bayonne, dated 1850-1 (Herbert, 1962) and another in Plymouth City Art Gallery. Two further studies possibly related were exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in November 1921 (nos. 94 & 98). According to Kauffmann (p.74), there are possibly two other versions: one is in a private collection, Paris whereas the other’s whereabouts remain unknown (authenticity disputed – see <i>Der Kunstwanderer</i>, 1928, p. 75 illus.). \r\nMillet seems to have painted this vigorous scene soon after he moved to Barbizon, a village near the forest of Fontainebleau, which attracted a number of artists painting in a broad naturalistic style. The intense colours put this painting close to Honoré Daumier’s oeuvre, for which it has been mistaken once (M. Gobin, oral opinion, 1936). \r\nThree colours dominate the earthen palette: the intense blue of the near sawyer’s trousers, his brilliant white shirt and the red of the third figure in the background. This colour scheme combined with the emphasis put on the strain of the figures may convey a political meaning. For instance, the <i>Winnover</i>, The National Gallery, London, exhibited at the Salon in 1848, has been interpreted as an allusion to the Revolution of February that year through the colours worn by the figure, blue, white and red, and the subject matter, separating the grain from the chaff. \r\nX-ray photography shows that the scene was painted over an earlier composition, most likely the lost oil sketch for <i>The Republic</i>, unsuccessfully submitted by Millet at a French state competition in 1848. Around this time, Millet made two other sketches entitled <i>L’Egalité</i> and <i>La Fraternité</i> stylistically compatible with the underlying composition. \r\nWhether this picture was a rural interpretation of a former political composition or not remains uncertain but the peasant scenes <i>in se</i> were not exempt of a certain socio-political connotation. The Barbizon members as well as the Realist painters and their critics did not hide their preference for anti-bourgeois subject matters and reaction against the tradition. Millet’s art was highly influential on both technique and subject matters of the next generation of artists including the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.","historicalContext":"19th-century French art is marked by a succession of movements based on a more or less close relationship with nature. At the beginning of the century, Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult. This movement was heralded in France by such painter as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). In its opposition to academic art and its demand for a modern style Realism continued the aims of the Romantics. They assumed that reality could be perceived without distortion or idealization, and sought after a mean to combine the perception of the individual with objectivity. This reaction in French painting against the Grand Manner is well represented by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who wrote a ‘Manifesto of Realism’, entitled <i>Le Réalisme</i> published in Paris in 1855. These ideas were challenged by the group of the Barbizon painters, who formed a recognizable school from the early 1830s to the 1870s and developed a free, broad and rough technique. They were mainly concerned by landscape painting and the rendering of light. The works of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), Jules Dupré (1811-1889), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) anticipate somehow  the <i>plein-air</i> landscapes of the Impressionists.","briefDescription":"Oil on canvas, 'Woodsawyers', Jean-François Millet, 1850-1852","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Kauffmann, C.M. <u>Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, II. 1800-1900 </u>, London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973, pp. 73-74, cat. no. 162."},{"reference":{"text":"<i>Memorial catalogue of the French and Dutch loan collection</i>, Edinburgh : Printed at the University Press by T. & A. Constable & Published by D. Douglas, 1888","id":"AUTH357773"},"details":"no.1131 & no. 83 (repr. of a sketch of it by William Hole, R.S.A)","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Monkhouse, C., 'The Constantine Ionides Collection', in <u>Magazine of Art</u>, vii, 1884, p. 43 repr. p. 37."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Tomson, A., <u>Jean-François Millet and the Barbizon School</u>, 1903, repr. facing p.66."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Herbert, R. L., 'Millet revisited' in <u>Burlington Magazine</u>, civ, 1962, p. 301."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Kauffmann, C. M., <u>The Barbizon School</u>, V&A Museum, 1965, p. 18, pl. 11."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Laughton, Bruce and Scalisi, Julia, 'Millet's \"Woodsawyers\" and \"La République\" rediscovered', in <u>Burlington Magazine</u>, January 1992, pp. 12-19."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Lepoitevin, L, <u>Jean-François Millet</u>, II, Paris, 1973, fig. 70."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Pollock, G., <u>Millet</u>, 1977, fig. 10 & 11."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Laughton, B., <u>Daumier and Millet Drawings</u>, 1991, pp. 83-84."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Anon. in <u>Athenaeum</u>, 23 July 1904, p. 119."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Watson, Andrew, 'Constantine Alexander Ionides and his collection of 19th-Century French Art', <u>Journal of the Scottish Society for Art history</u> vol. 3, 1998, p. 28."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Booth, B. A., and Mehew, E., <u>The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson</u> vol. 4, London, 1994, p. 207."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"<u>100 Great Paintings in The Victoria & Albert Museum.</u> London: V&A, 1985, p.146"},{"reference":{"text":"Georgel, Chantal, <i>La forêt de Fontainebleau : un atelier grandeur nature</i>, Paris : Réunion des musées nationaux : Musée d'Orsay, 2007","id":"AUTH357780"},"details":"no.65","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Bruno Girveau, Annie De Wamrrechies, Chantai Georgel, Régis Cotentin, <i>Millet</i>, Paris : RMN-Grand Palais, 2017. ISBN:  9782711870455."},{"reference":{"text":"Henley, William Ernest. <i>Catalogue of a loan collection of pictures by the great French and Dutch romanticists of this century</i>, London : Dowdeswell Galleries, 1889","id":"AUTH357775"},"details":"85","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"<i>Exhibition of works by the Old Masters and by deceased masters of the British school : Winter Exhibition, twenty seventh year</i>, London : Royal Academy of Arts, 1896","id":"AUTH357779"},"details":"64","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Simon Kelly and Andrew Watson, ‘The Origins of the Taste for Barbizon Painting in Britain: Paul Duran-Ruel’s Exhibitions of the Society of French Artists’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, vol. 23 no. 2, Autumn 2024 (https://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/autumn24/kelly-watson-on-paul-durand-ruels-exhibitions-of-the-society-of-french-artists),"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"fig. 4","free":"Sarah Herring with Simon Kelly, 'Millet. Life on the Land', London : National Gallery Global, 2025. ISBN: 9781857097382"}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[{"text":"figures","id":"AAT189808"},{"text":"saws","id":"AAT24671"},{"text":"wood-workers","id":"AAT25368"},{"text":"loggers","id":"AAT25610"},{"text":"men","id":"AAT25928"}],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["CAI.47"],"accessionNumberNum":"47","accessionNumberPrefix":"CAI","accessionYear":null,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2026-02-19","recordCreationDate":"1999-12-15","availableToBook":false}}