{
"data": {
"id": 146752,
"accession_number": "1972.19",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Return from the Fields, c. 1846\u201347. Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet (French, 1814\u20131875). Oil on fabric; framed: 68 x 60 x 10 cm (26 3/4 x 23 5/8 x 3 15/16 in.); unframed: 46.2 x 37.8 cm (18 3/16 x 14 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, 1972.19",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Return from the Fields",
"creation_date": "c. 1846\u201347",
"creation_date_earliest": 1846,
"creation_date_latest": 1847,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on fabric",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 68 x 60 x 10 cm (26 3/4 x 23 5/8 x 3 15/16 in.); Unframed: 46.2 x 37.8 cm (18 3/16 x 14 7/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.68,
"height_inch": 26,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.75,
"width": 0.6,
"width_inch": 23,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.625,
"depth": 0.1,
"depth_inch": 3,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.9375
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.462,
"height_inch": 18,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.1875,
"width": 0.378,
"width_inch": 14,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower right: J. F. Millet\r\n\r\n\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 301752,
"title": "Year in Review: 1972",
"description": "Year in Review: 1972. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 27-March 18, 1973).",
"opening_date": "1973-02-27T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 361479,
"title": "Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet",
"description": "Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet. Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (January 20-March 7, 1976); Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 75008 Paris, France (organizer) (October 17-January 5, 1976).",
"opening_date": "1975-10-17T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 218753,
"title": "Return to Nature: Millet, the Barbizon Artists, and the Renewal of the Rural Tradition",
"description": "Return to Nature: Millet, the Barbizon Artists, and the Renewal of the Rural Tradition. Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Kofu (September 26-December 8, 1998).",
"opening_date": "1998-09-26T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 227723,
"title": "L'Ecole de Barbizon",
"description": "L'Ecole de Barbizon. Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 69001 Lyon, France (organizer) (June 20-September 9, 2002).",
"opening_date": "2002-06-20T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 293304,
"title": "Praised and Ridiculed: French Painting 1820 - 1880",
"description": "Praised and Ridiculed: French Painting 1820 - 1880. Kunsthaus Z\u00fcrich, CH-8024 Z\u00fcrich, Switzerland (organizer) (November 10, 2017-January 28, 2018).",
"opening_date": "2017-11-10T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Glasgow. International Exhibition (1901), no. 1323, The Last Load, lent by W. A. Coats, Esq.",
"opening_date": "1901-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Paris, Grand Palais; London, Hayward Gallery. Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet (1975-76), no. 22 (repr.), (no. 12 in English cat.).",
"opening_date": "1975-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "K\u00f8fu, Japan. Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art. Return to Nature: J. F. Millet, the Barbizon Artists, and the Renewal of the Rural Tradition (1998), 22, 108, no. ii-13, 124 (repr.).",
"opening_date": "1998-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Lyon, France. Musee des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. \"L'Ecole de Barbizon\" (6/20/2002 - 9/9/2002), exh cat no. 82, p.246.",
"opening_date": "2002-06-20T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "John W. Wilson. His sale, Paris, Drouot, 27-28 April 1874 (lot 113), Retour des Champs, ff 8,200. Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Hartmann, M\u00fcnster. His sale, Paris, Drouot, 11 May 1876 (lot 24), Retour des champs, 45 x 38 cm, ff 6,350. W. A. Coats, Scotland, 1901. London sale, Christie's, 10 June 1927 (lot 74), The Last Load, for \u00a3483 to Blaker. D. Croal Thompson, 1928. Howard Murray, Montreal. His sale, New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 23 October 1941 (lot 34, repr.), bought by L. J. Marion. Hazlitt Gallery, London. Purchased by the CMA in 1972.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This idealized vision of noble peasant life was painted during a period of intense industrialization in France, accompanied by economic depression and the abandonment of farms. Nostalgic peasant scenes were especially popular in the 1840s, a stark contrast to the disillusionment and tension that would violently surface in the Revolution of 1848. The vague shapes and faces of the family seen here make them symbols of the land, rather than individuals.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60472208"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1972.19-return-from-the-fiel"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1972.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 60, no. 3 (March 1973): 63\u2013115.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 83; Mentioned: p. 109, no. 124",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25093732"
},
{
"citation": "Talbot, William S. \u201cJean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet: Return from the Fields.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 60, no. 9 (November 1973): 258\u2013266.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: Cover, p. 258; Mentioned: p. 259",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25152497"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 207",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n227"
},
{
"citation": "Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 442-444, Vol. II, no. 153",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Gianfreda, Sandra. \"Introduction.\" In Praised and Ridiculed: French Painting 1820-1880. Zu\u0308rcher Kunstgesellschaft, ed., 12-19. Munich: Hirmer; Z\u00fcrich: Kunsthaus Z\u00fcrich, [2017].",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 17; Reproduced: p. 108, cat. 78",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Rubin, James. \"Landscape into Modernity: Nineteenth-Century Transitions.\" In Praised and Ridiculed: French Painting 1820-1880. Zu\u0308rcher Kunstgesellschaft, ed., 56-66. Munich: Hirmer; Z\u00fcrich: Kunsthaus Z\u00fcrich, [2017].",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 66; Reproduced: p. 108, cat. 78",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Herring, Sarah. The Nineteenth-Century French Paintings. London : National Gallery Company, 2019.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: pp.385-386, fig. 4",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1972.19",
"images": {
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"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 146752,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1667,
"description": "Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet (French, 1814\u20131875)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Son of a wealthy farmer, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet studied with a portrait painter from Cherbourg, Bon du Mouchel (1807-1846), himself a student of David (q.v.). Mouchel required his young apprentice to copy paintings in the museum in Cherbourg, where Millet had been sent to enter the studio of Lucien-Th\u00e9ophile Langlois (1803-1845), a former student of Gros (q.v.). Millet received a stipend from the city to move to Paris in 1837, enrolling in the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Delaroche (q.v.), where he met Couture (q.v.). Within two years he had left Delaroche, and his stipend was withdrawn. To earn a living, he executed pastels and small paintings in the style of Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1729) and Fran\u00e7ois Boucher (1703-1770). In 1839 the first painting that Millet sent to the Salon, Saint Anne Instructing the Virgin, was refused. The following year one portrait was accepted at the Salon, and Millet spent the winter in Cherbourg where he could make a living painting portraits. After his marriage to Pauline-Virginie Ono, he returned to Paris, painting various subjects but finding little success. He met Th\u00e9odore Rousseau (q.v.) and Diaz de la Pe\u00f1a (q.v.) and was introduced to Durand-Ruel, who purchased some of his works, at that point mainly pastoral scenes and nudes. In the late 1840s Millet began to devote himself to painting peasants and rural life, subjects that automatically had political overtones in the light of the 1848 revolutions. In 1849 he settled in Barbizon, continuing his depictions of the peasantry. He achieved some financial security thanks to Alfred Sensier, who supplied him with materials and sold his paintings. At the Salon of 1850-51 Millet exhibited The Sower (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), which received a great deal of attention. Although the conservatives accused Millet of overemphasizing the poverty of the peasants, the republican and leftist movement hailed the painting as a dignified representation of the working class. Millet claimed to be interested solely in the biblical allusions of his subject, yet he seemed to persist in painting the poorest peasants at the worst tasks. The final ten years of his life were successful ones. A retrospective of his work at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1867 solidified his reputation, and the following year he received the Legion of Honor. His work was influential for generations of artists.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1814",
"death_year": "1875",
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"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1972-05-03T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1846,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1846\u201347",
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"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": true,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 07:31:09.162000"
}
}