Millet could plough a field in the morning, paint in the afternoon, and recite Shakespeare at night. He was the eldest son of farming parents in Gruchy, Normandy, near the coast, and he said: a peasant I was born, a peasant I will die.

Two village priests educated him in Latin and literature before he was pulled back to farm work. He eventually reached Paris, where he lived in poverty for a period, painting in a damp cellar. His first wife died of tuberculosis three years after their 1841 marriage. He later had nine children with Catherine Lemaire.

The Gleaners (1857) and The Angelus (1857-59) made him famous and controversial. Both depict peasants at work with a dignity that unnerved the bourgeoisie, who saw political radicalism in the simple act of painting agricultural labourers as worthy subjects. The Angelus became one of the most widely reproduced images in the world.

Van Gogh was obsessed with him. While in the asylum at Saint-Remy in late 1889 and early 1890, Van Gogh made twenty-one copies of Millet's paintings over three months, translating them into his own colour and brushwork. Millet died in 1875, co-founder of the Barbizon school and the painter who gave peasant life a permanent place in art.