Faggot Gatherer (recto)

Francisque Millet (1642-1679), also known as Jean-François Millet (not to be confused with the later Realist painter of the same name), was a Flemish-born French landscape painter known for his Italianate landscapes in the manner of Poussin and Dughet. Faggot Gatherer from c. 1650-75 depicts a figure gathering firewood in an Italianate landscape with the pen and wash technique that distinguishes his best drawings. The c. 1650-75 date places this in the period when Millet was developing the Italianate landscape manner that would make him one of the most popular landscape painters in France, and the subject of a faggot gatherer in an Italianate landscape combines the pastoral genre subject with the classical landscape tradition.

Francisque Millet's Italianate landscape drawings are important in the history of French landscape painting because they demonstrate the classical landscape tradition that Poussin and Dughet established and that Millet continued. Faggot Gatherer shows Millet combining the pastoral genre subject of a figure gathering firewood with the Italianate landscape setting that characterizes the classical landscape tradition, creating a type of landscape that was among the most popular in 17th-century France.

Faggot Gatherer is Francisque Millet combining pastoral genre with classical landscape: a figure gathering firewood in an Italianate landscape rendered in pen and wash with the compositional rigor of the Poussin tradition. The c. 1650-75 drawing demonstrates the Italianate landscape manner that made Millet one of the most popular landscape painters in France.