Resumen de Naive Impressions from Nature: Millet's Readings, from Montaigne to Charlotte Brontë
In 1865 Jean-Fraņcois Millet copied many passages from Montaigne, Palissy, Piccolpasso, Grimm, Germaine de Staël, and Charlotte Brontë, confirming the erudition evident in his letters. In his 1865 Salon review, Alfred Sensier, writing under the name Jean Ravenel, used some of these copies supplied by the artist; he quoted from Millet's letters and from the latter's heretofore undated and little-known manifesto “Notes sur l'art,” to make Millet his undisclosed collaborator. Millet's extracts, featuring sixteenth-century writers, give evidence of the distinctive character of his naturalism, a “rustic language” corroborated by his own collection of sixteenth-century art.
