The National Gallery has announced plans to stage the first UK exhibition dedicated to Jean-François Millet in nearly 50 years, opening in autumn 2025.
“Millet: Life on the Land” will present around 15 paintings and drawings by the influential 19th-century French artist, with the majority coming from British public collections. The exhibition coincides with the 150th anniversary of Millet’s death in 1875.
The centrepiece of the exhibition will be the exceptional loan of “L’Angélus” (1857-59) from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. This iconic work depicts a farming couple pausing for prayer at dusk, and gained worldwide fame after becoming an obsession for surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.
Sir Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, highlighted the significance of the loan: “The exceptional loan of L’Angélus, Millet’s most celebrated work, will focus the public’s attention on this fascinating artist – a painter of rural life, who was sometimes accused of being a dangerous anarchist.”
The exhibition will explore Millet’s artistic development from the late 1840s through his move to the village of Barbizon in the Fontainebleau Forest, where he became a key figure of the Barbizon school. Millet’s distinctive approach to portraying rural workers with dignity and grandeur – a status typically reserved for historical figures – will be a central theme.
Visitors will see the National Gallery’s own “The Winnower” (about 1847-48), which was one of Millet’s first paintings exploring rural labour and was well received at the 1848 Paris Salon. However, the exhibition will note that his later works proved more controversial, with critics divided over the political implications of his sympathetic depictions of peasant life.
Other notable works include “The Sower” (1847-48) from the National Museum in Cardiff, “The Wood Sawyers” (1850-52) from the Victoria and Albert Museum, and “The Goose Girl” (1854-56) from National Museum Cardiff. The exhibition will also reunite two drawings of shepherdesses from the Cooper Gallery in Barnsley and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge for the first time.
Sarah Herring, Associate Curator of Post 1800 Paintings, explained: “Millet endowed rural labourers with dignity and nobility, depicting them in drawings and paintings with empathy and compassion.”
The final section will examine Millet’s depictions of wood gathering, an activity typically performed by the most vulnerable members of society and heavily regulated by authorities at the time.
When Millet died in 1875, his works were well-known in Britain and eagerly collected by British art enthusiasts, resulting in the significant presence of his works in UK public collections that makes this exhibition possible.
The exhibition opens in autumn 2025 at the National Gallery in London.
