Valley Near Vichy c. 1866 - 1868

Curator: Jean-François Millet's pencil drawing, "Valley Near Vichy," created circa 1866-1868, offers a glimpse into the French countryside. Editor: It feels unfinished, almost ghostly. You can practically sense the artist hovering over the paper, trying to capture a fleeting impression of light. Curator: Absolutely. This drawing exemplifies Millet’s movement away from strict realism toward a more impressionistic style, valuing personal vision over exact replication. You'll notice he renders the trees, foliage, and hills with these loose, searching lines. The very act of drawing becomes visible. Editor: Which is interesting, isn’t it? The overt emphasis on *how* it's made, not just *what* it depicts. I'm intrigued by his choice of pencil on paper for a landscape—so easily transportable and repeatable. Was he making this in preparation for a larger work, or did it serve a different function? Curator: Some speculate these sketches were visual notes, studies for larger paintings, yes. But drawings like this also represent the burgeoning interest in plein air sketching amongst artists during that time. Think about the broader social shift: art moving out of the studio and engaging more directly with the physical world. Editor: So, there's a clear link there to industrialisation, right? Factory-produced materials, like ready-made pencils, empowering the artist to make work much quicker, with relative ease compared to traditional painting practices? Curator: Precisely. It democratized art-making on some level. But I also see, in the vagueness of the shapes, a yearning for something almost timeless in the landscape itself—an idea of an essential France embodied in the landscape. Editor: Hmmm, perhaps. I still think the visible labor speaks loudest, showing the evolution of art-making tools. It makes you think of Millet as someone engaging with those processes actively. Curator: I'll concede that there is an immediacy here. The symbol and the method work hand in hand, then. Editor: Right! A simple drawing that contains multitudes when you really dig in.