The Angelus

See also: Angelus (homonymy)

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the Angelus is a table of Jean-François Millet, painted in 1858. In full agricultural work, two peasants posed their tools to put themselves in prayer with simplicity while one guesses the Angélus to sound with the remote bell-tower, (that of the Saint-Paul church of XIIe and XVe centuries of Chailly-in-Beer, close to Barbizon).

Following the harvest of the potatoes and Of glaneuses the , Millet sticks here to represent with realism and delicacy an aspect of the daily life of its time campaigns. Parallel to the taste of country crowd for the magic practices and the great ostentatious ceremonies, second half of the 19th century sees the development within the country world of a major and more personal piety. The prayer of the angelus is completely representative of this sensitivity.

This table takes as a starting point its country childhood. “The Angelus is a table which I made by thinking how, while working formerly in the fields, my grandmother did not miss, while intending to sound the bell, to make us stop our work to say the angelus for these dead poor” Millet said. He does not seek to represent the religiosity of the rural world, but to fix his rhythm of life.

This table very largely was reproduced on various objects and supports and copy or reinterpret by other artists 19th century and 20th century. Salvador Dali in particular was fascinated by this work, and devoted to him a whole book ( the tragic Myth of the Millet Angelus). Variations of this Millet table appear in several of its own paintings. In 1889, the will of repurchase of the table by Louvre became in France a business of state and media, opposing the royalist line which did not want this acquisition, to the government which did not want that the table becomes the property of the American museums. The State not joining together the sum necessary, the table was bought by the American Art Association in 1890, but resold at once with Alfred Chauchard, which bequeaths it to the national museums with its death, in 1909. Consequently, exposed to Louvre, it is lacerated by one unbalanced in 1932. It is affected with the museum of Orsay in 1986.

Just like the Mona Lisa , the Angelus was represented an incalculable number of times, on calendars of the Stations, groundworks, pieces of furniture, books of schoolboy, etc It became a kind of icon of popular painting.

Partial source

Work with accompanying notes on the site of the museum of Orsay

See too

Notice supplements on the site of the museum of Orsay

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