Sheep Shearing at Barbizon

In the early 1850s, Hunt became a friend, patron, and student of the French painter Jean-François Millet [17.1485]. Appalled by Millet’s modest economic circumstances, Hunt purchased many of his paintings, including the unfinished study Three Men Shearing Sheep in a Barn [2000.1221]. He also copied the composition in order to understand the poses of men working in a typical rural activity and the technique of rendering light streaming through the doorway. Hunt’s painting is somewhat more finished than Millet’s, especially in the strongly outlined figure of the man in the doorway, who leans from the weight of the sheep he carries. Hunt adapted the soft brushwork, compositional devices, and rural subject matter that he learned from Millet in many of his own canvases throughout the 1850s.  

By the time of Hunt’s memorial exhibition, Sheep Shearing at Barbizon was in the possession of Edward Wheelwright, Hunt’s Harvard classmate and also a student of Millet’s in the late 1850s. Although Wheelwright abandoned his attempt to become a painter, he did contribute to Millet’s reputation in America through his activities as a writer, collector, and fund raiser. Hunt, as well as Wheelwright, helped shape the taste for Millet’s work in Boston, where it was avidly collected. Millet’s paintings, pastels, and drawings, radical at the time, inspired many local artists just as they influenced Pissarro, Van Gogh, and others.

This text was adapted from Janet L. Comey’s entry in Impressionism Abroad: Boston and French Painting, by Erica E.Hirshler et al., exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2005).