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The A\an With a Hoe 
 
 An Essay in Interpretation 
 
 Wn. Dallaa Araxes. 
 
 A picture is the painter's incarnation of his thoughts 
 n symbols of form and colour. 
 
 George Henry I^ewes. 
 
 REPRINTED 
 
 O VKRIy AND 
 June, 
 
 FROM THE 
 MONTHIy Y, 
 1891. 
 
( • • • • 
 
" As Every Grain of Gold is Gold, 
 So Every Grain of Truth is Truth." 
 
 Whatever in this little work is worthy of so high an 
 dnor, i dedicate, in reverence and admiration, to him who 
 vs devoted his life and fortune to the service of humanity, 
 
 TO JOHN RUSKiN. 
 
1 Some tell me that I deny the charms 
 of the country. I find much more than 
 f'jcharms, — I find infinite glories. I see 
 C'las well as they do the little flowers of 
 S Which Christ said that Solomon, in all 
 f^'his glory, was not arrayed like one of 
 l^these. I see the halos of dandelions, 
 ^}]ind the sun, also, which spreads out be- 
 ^^yond the world its glory in the clouds. 
 ^But I see as well, in the plain, the 
 "^(Steaming horses at work, and in a rocky 
 Sjplace a man all worn out, whose "Aan/'' 
 
 las been heard since morning, and who 
 
 ■Mtries to straighten himself a moment 
 fand breathe. The drama is surrounded 
 
 151 
 
 by beauty. 
 
 Jean-Francois Millet. 
 
We smile at the epigram that Mezzo- 
 fanti, the distinguished Italian linguist, 
 could speak a hundred and twenty lan- 
 guages, but could say nothing in any of 
 them, because we realize that language 
 is merely a means to an end ; that facil* 
 ity in picking up vocabulary and forms 
 is a decidedly second-rate accomplish- 
 nrient ; and that the ability to utter com- 
 rr,ionplaces and platitudes in several lan- 
 guages is one that the polyglot shares 
 with sailors, donkey-boys, and parrots, 
 riut comparatively few realize that every 
 art, using the term in the narrow sense, 
 is but a means of expression ; that the 
 painter that has mastered technique has 
 also but learned a method of giving con- 
 crete representation to his beliefs, ideals, 
 and aspirations ; that without something 
 more than the mere manual dexterity 
 to copy accurately what is placed before 
 ^lim, he produces work no more admira- 
 
ble than that of any other handicraft 
 requiring a quick, correct eye, and a 
 trained, obedient hand. ''Any one that 
 can learn to write can learn to draw," 
 , says one of the best of the manuals ; 
 I and in nine cases out of ten the per- 
 formance will be exactly on a par with 
 that of the professional writing master, 
 1 it might have added. The " something 
 j more " may be, generally is, merely a 
 (poetical sensitiveness to the beauty 
 i everywhere around us, but overlooked 
 jby us grosser mortals ; the painter may 
 (simply glorify the commonplace by 
 (showing us the really important in the 
 (apparently trivial, the essentially beau- 
 tiful in the superficially ugly. 
 
 Art was given for that — 
 ( God uses us to help each other so, 
 
 I Lending our minds out; 
 
 land the artist that thus deepens our joy 
 tin life and its surroundings is certainly 
 ^'doing a worthy work that entitles him 
 jto the gratitude of every one whose 
 /pleasure he has increased, or whose 
 i burden he has lightened. But when he 
 'draws higher things with the same 
 ! truth ' ; when he ' takes the Prior's pul- 
 pit-place, interprets God to all of us ' ; 
 
1 
 
When to_^eifecl^_ mastery of technique, 
 passionate admiration of beauty, and 
 delicate selective instinct, he adds an 
 earnest, reverent spirit, warm human 
 sympathy, and a noble philosophy of 
 life, he produces works of a far higher 
 jvalue, — works that the world will not 
 jwillingly let die. 
 
 Back of all art, whatever may be the 
 means of expression that the possession 
 of special aptitudes leads him to employ, 
 stands the artist himself, and the great- 
 ness of his work will always be strictly 
 commensurate with the greatness of his 
 soul. Unconsciously to himself, per- 
 haps, his personal idiosyncrasies and 
 predilections tinge all that he does, and 
 to expect noble art from an ignoble man 
 is to expect figs from thistles. For better 
 or for worse, le style est de rhomme 
 meme. No man escapes from himself : 
 the Madonnas of the sensualist are but 
 draped Venuses ; Titian's Penitent Mag- 
 dalene has yet to learn the meaning of 
 the word repentance ; Rubens's Greek 
 goddesses are coarse and vulgar ; Ber- 
 nini's angels are of the flesh fleshly. On 
 the other hand, the pure, sweet soul of 
 Fra Angelico speaks from every stroke 
 
\of his brush ; Donatello's dancing and 
 singing children mirror the frankness 
 and simplicity of the sculptor's mind ; 
 ^^md 
 
 The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 
 And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 
 
 t Wrought in a sad sincerity ; 
 
 j Himself from God he could not free. 
 
 tin literature, as in life, we rank earnest- 
 ness, morality, and modesty, far above 
 Mippancy, sensuality, and arrogance. 
 Ford is ranked below Shakspere because 
 of the lower moral tone of his plays ; 
 Johnson above Steele because of his 
 deeper earnestness. What is the pecul- 
 iarity distinguishing paint from print- 
 er's ink, the vibrations of stretched cat- 
 gut from the vibrations of the vocal 
 chords, the enduring embodiment of a 
 thought from its fleeting symbol, that 
 prevents our judging the manifestations 
 of man's spirit in painting, music, sculpt- 
 ure, and architecture, according to the 
 same criterion ? Was " art for art's 
 sake" ever applied to anything but a 
 clever triviality ? 
 
 Two things, then, are to be considered 
 in every picture : the mottf, the basal 
 idea ; and the technique^ the expression 
 
 I 
 1 
 
J' 
 
 oflthe idea. Speaking broadly, it may be 
 sajid that the works of the earliest mas- 
 ters — Cimabue, Giotto, and their imme- 
 diate followers — were filled with noble 
 se^ntiment and faulty drawing; that 
 modern art is wellnigh perfect in tech- 
 nique, but trivial and barren. The old 
 rejligious feeling that inspired so many 
 ofi the greatest masterpieces is no longer 
 aril active, living faith, — at least, not 
 aipong modern French artists, — -and 
 tlilere is little in contemporaneous life to 
 take its place. In this restless, self- 
 conscious age the simplicity, serenity, 
 arid sincerity, of Greek sculpture and 
 early Italian painting are almost lost 
 qualities. 
 
 Feeling this lack, and disgusted with 
 the superficiality, faulty faultlessness, 
 and personal self-display, of modern art, 
 a few painters, deliberately forgetting 
 their superior technique, give us the in- 
 correct drawing, lack of perspective, and 
 ungraceful stained-glass " attitudes, of 
 the early masters, hoping that amid the 
 dross the pure gold may lie hid. With 
 the Charity of Puvis de Chavannes, the 
 Ecce Ancilla Domini, the Girlhood of 
 Mary Virgin in mind, who will say that 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
they do not sometimes succeed? But 
 surely the painter that, forgetting 
 naught, suppressing naught, attains the 
 same sincerity; that unites the simpli- 
 city and self-effacement of Bellini or 
 Carpaccio with the perfect execution of 
 modern French art, is of a higher type. 
 And such a man was Jean-Frangois 
 Millet. 
 
 The Man with a Hoe was generally 
 conceded to be far and away the most 
 important canvas in the late exhibition ; 
 but its superiority over the facile pret- 
 tiness of Bouguereau, the clever "effect- 
 iveness" of Gerome, and the smooth 
 inanity of Cabanel, is not, I take it, a 
 superiority of technique. Considered 
 merely as a painted representation of 
 things seen, it is, to be sure, a great 
 work of art ; considered in its deeper 
 meaning, it is a work of great art. 
 
 Well, they call that a great paint- 
 ing ! Why, there is n't a bit of expres- 
 sion in the face, and I can 't see the eye 
 at all. The man looks like an idiot ! " 
 was a remark heard before the picture. 
 
 " Yes," was the answer ; " he 's a 
 mere animal. I suppose it 's true to na- 
 ture ; but why could n't the artist have 
 chosen a prettier model ?" 
 
Possibly the reason was that he had 
 no intention of producing a pretty pic- 
 ture. Can it be believed that a painter 
 of such insight and accuracy as Millet 
 elsewhere in this picture shows himself 
 to be, overlooked what is thus apparent 
 to the most superficial observer; that 
 he did not know that his peasant is ugly 
 and awkward, having more in common 
 with the beasts of the field than with 
 Voltaire and Victor Hugo, Laplace and 
 Pasteur, Pascal and St. Louis ; that he 
 could not see that the picture not only 
 is not pleasing, but is positively repul- 
 sive Surely, we may assume that Mil- 
 let knew all this, and pass to the further 
 question : How came an artist to paint 
 such a picture, deliberately to prefer ug- 
 liness to beauty, awkwardness to grace ? 
 The answer that Millet was a realist, 
 and painted what he actually saw, is 
 hardly an adequate one. Realism is not 
 necessarily ugliness or triviality; it is 
 merely truth to nature ; and " there are 
 other truths besides coats and waist- 
 coats, pots and pans, drawing-rooms and 
 suburban villas." W/iat he sees depends 
 on the artist himself. This world is full 
 of beauty, and the painter that deliber- 
 
 1 
 
ately prefers to portray the ugly must 
 justify his choice, be he realist, idealist, 
 conventionalist, impressionist, or what 
 not. If there is sufficient reason for the 
 preference ; if the painter has some im- 
 portant lesson to teach, some great truth 
 to bring home to men's business and 
 bosoms, and if only the ugly will ex- 
 press his meaning or answer his pur- 
 pose, he may be justified ; otherwise not. 
 The Gothic gargoyle has a sufficient 
 raison d'etre ; that sensual, leering face 
 on the Venetian Santa Maria Formosa 
 only reflects the bestiality of its maker's 
 mind. To show that Millet's choice can 
 be justified ; that the ugliness is essen- 
 tial, not accidental ; that the uncouth 
 alone would answer his purpose, is the 
 object of the present essay. 
 
 Born and reared among peasants, Mil- 
 let knew by sad experience the hard- 
 ships of their laborious, joyless lives. 
 Others, drawing their inspiration from 
 Vergil and Theocritus, might paint the 
 shepherd piping to his flock, the refined 
 young laborer wooing the lady-like dairy 
 maid, the village festivity under the 
 trees, the dance on the green ; he knew 
 only the weary shepherd caring for his 
 
flock in the bleak, cutting wind ; the 
 uncouth Potato-diggers ; the unchildish 
 Goose-tender ; the hardly human Man 
 with a Hoe. He painted the life as he 
 knew it in all its hideousness and repul- 
 siveness, the strongest of his pictures 
 being the one under consideration. Let 
 us see what it represents. 
 
 Leaning on his short -handled hoe, a 
 common laborer is resting for a moment 
 to ease his back from the pain caused by 
 continual stooping at his task of prepar- 
 ing a bit of waste land for cultivation : 
 one of the lowest class in society, of the 
 substratum on which the whole fabric 
 rests, is represented engaged in the low- 
 est work of agriculture. Next year, in 
 consequence of this man's labor, two 
 blades of grass will grow where one now 
 grows ; and every man in the realm, up 
 to Napoleon the Little himself, on his 
 stolen gilt gingerbread throne, will re- 
 ceive benefit, inappreciable perhaps, but 
 none the less real, from this man's toil. 
 Along the whole line, from lowest to 
 highest, through all grades of society, 
 will be felt the good effects of his hav- 
 ing subdued to man's service yet a bit 
 more of Mother Earth. The benefactor 
 
of humanity — he is no less ! And how 
 does society reward its benefactor ? 
 Why, when, in a few moments, the dull 
 backache is somewhat m.ore bearable, 
 he '11 go at his wearisome toil again ; 
 and when it gets too dark to work, he '11 
 go home to his squalid hut, eat his 
 meager supper of coarse food, and in 
 utter physical exhaustion, fling himself 
 on his straw — for what? To seek in 
 sleep sufficient strength to pass the mor- 
 row in the same manner. And next 
 week he '11 bring under cultivation yet a 
 little more waste land ; and next year a 
 little more ; and next decade a little 
 more ; till at last he gives up the unequal 
 contest, and is shoveled under the earth 
 that he has struggled so long to subdue. 
 His face expresses no emotion, — what 
 emotion should it express ? Joy, think 
 you? Or hope? His father and his 
 father's father labored thus before him, 
 and for aught that he can see, his chil- 
 dren's children will but continue his 
 work. Expression denotes intelligence, 
 and what time has he for the cultivation 
 of the God-given intellect that alone dis- 
 tinguishes him from the brutes that he 
 compels to his service ? He hardly real- 
 
izes that he has such a thing. Is it any 
 wonder that a church that promises 
 simply everlasting rest, of which the 
 momentary cessation of work during the 
 ringing of the Angehis is the type, 
 has so deep a hold on this people ? 
 
 This, then, is the reward that society 
 bestows upon her benefactor in this 
 boastful nineteenth century, in the most 
 highly civilized nation in the world, — 
 barely the means of subsistence, that he 
 may keep alive to cgntinue to benefit 
 her ! In France, mother of arts and 
 sciences ; in gay, light-hearted, vivacious 
 France, with its "civilizing mission," 
 thousands of men and women, formed 
 in the image of their Maker, and equal 
 in His sight with the courtliest gentle- 
 men and most gracious ladies of the 
 land, thus wear out their lives in ex- 
 hausting, soul-stupefying labor, that one 
 may pass his time in luxurious idleness, 
 devising schemes for spending his in- 
 come or for warding off ennui ! And in 
 a social system based on the rule of the 
 old border foragers, 
 
 That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can. 
 
the mass of mankind tamely acquiesces ; 
 as if "the wasteful straitness and blank 
 absence of outlook or hope of the mil- 
 lions, who come on to the earth that 
 greets them with no smile, and then 
 stagger blindly under dull burdens for 
 a season, and at last are shoveled silently 
 back under the ground," were necessary 
 concomitants of any possible social or- 
 der ; as if "the perfection of social bless- 
 edness" had once for all been achieved! 
 After all, is not Carlyle right ; was not 
 Gurth, born thrall to Cedric the Saxon 
 and certain of his share of the bacon, 
 better off than the modern worker, born 
 thrall to a social system that to the un- 
 ceasing labor of the slave adds the har- 
 rassing uncertainty of gaining even the 
 means of subsistence ? Is the "freedom" 
 of the laborer of the present day more 
 than a nominal one ? Has he not been 
 "robbed of the substance and fooled 
 with the shadow " ? 
 
 In Millet the lower classes found a' 
 voice to protest against the monstrous 
 inequalities of the present social order. 
 To a people filled with ideas of country 
 life drawn from eclogues, idyls, and pas- 
 torals, he revealed the bitter truth. Of 
 
the wealthy, pleasure-loving Parisians, 
 this picture asked, "Can you devise no 
 means by which the poor, whose toil 
 enables you to live in ease and luxury, 
 may enjoy at least the comforts of life ? " 
 Their only answer was to refuse The 
 Man with a Hoe admission to the salon 
 because of its socialistic tendencies, — 
 and six years later Paris was in the 
 hands of the Commune. No CEdipus 
 having yet arisen to solve the riddle, to 
 every thinking man this voice from the 
 peasantry still cries. In vain do we 
 shrug our shoulders and murmur, " So 
 hath it been ; so be it. Though the 
 times may be out of joint, we were not 
 born to set them right in our heart 
 of hearts we cannot forget the fate 
 of him who asked, "Am I my broth- 
 er's keeper " De te fabula ! cries con- 
 science. 
 
 To say that the picture preaches so- 
 cialism is, however, merely to acknowl- 
 edge that in the depths of your own 
 soul, though perhaps only thus uncon- 
 sciously are you willing to confess it, 
 there is a lurking belief that in some 
 form of socialism is to be found the 
 future welfare of the human race. Mil- 
 
let proposGB no scheme, spreads no 
 propaganda. He is destructive, not 
 constructive. He merely points out the 
 evil, and leaves it for others to find the 
 remedy. Small wonder, however, that 
 by those of the lower classes that still 
 retain some gleams of intelligence, spite 
 of their grinding, stupefying toil, the 
 red flag is unfurled ; and that schemes 
 of communism, socialism, nay, even of 
 anarchy, must be put down at the point 
 of the bayonet and the mouth of the 
 cannon. But one might as well try to 
 stay the incoming tide with mop and 
 bucket. Some change must come, and 
 as one of the wisest of English states- 
 men has written, "It is only the faith 
 that we are moving slowly away from 
 the existing order, as our ancestors 
 moved slowly away from the old want of 
 order, that makes the present endurable, 
 and any tenacious effort to raise the 
 future possible." 
 
 By whatever means it may be accom- 
 plished, whether by a modification of the 
 present social system, or by "grasping 
 the sorry scheme of things entire, and 
 shattering it to bits," Heaven hasten the 
 day when no peasant-painter anywhere 
 
on this fai» earth will have cause to utter 
 such a protest against man's inhuman- 
 ity to man ; when the interest in The 
 Man with a Hoe will be merely techni- 
 cal and antiquarian. 
 
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3 ms 0-1109 891CI 
 
 University of California Library 
 Los Angeles 
 
 ig book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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