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Jean François Millet was a French painter born into a prosperous farming family. He was able to gain a thorough education and became an apprentice for a local painter in Cherbourg. He studied at the École de Beaux-Arts in Paris for a short period of time. His earlier career was not very successful and he struggled financially, until he began to become acquainted with Barbizon School painters and the Realism movement-which focused on the depictions of nature and contemporary life in an accurate, unembellished manner. He created a series of etchings in the 1850s and 1860s portraying peasant subjects. These prints often had similar motifs to his paintings, which started to gain more success in the late 1860s. However, the onset of a war with Prussia compelled him to leave Paris. He spent his last few years in Normandy and eventually he died in Barbizon, France.Label Type
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La Couseuse, French for The Seamstress, was made during the renewed popularity of printmaking in the 19th century. This etching shows a woman sewing in the light of a window. The subject matter of this print aligns with Millet’s dedication to depicting rural domestic life. Associated with the Realist movement, here Millet draws inspiration from the Dutch Golden Age Genre painters of the 17th century. He created a painting with the same title and similar subject matter around the same time as the production of this print. Although the painting has a different perspective than the print, the two are very similar.