Painting Analysis Jean-Francois Millet: 'Priory Term Paper

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His work can be seen as fitting into a wider context of artists working to represent the France their generally well-off and comfortably middle-class and upper-class purchasers wanted to see and to believe in. The purchasers of Millet's works may never have visited the Normandy countryside for themselves, but they could share in its beauty and its spiritual and moral values through Millet's art and the art of other painters like him. The fact that, rather than being dominated by perhaps unappealing figures of the poor and exploited peasantry this picture depicts an apparently attractive and straightforward landscape can only have increased its appeal, in contrast perhaps to some of Millet's earlier work in which the human figures of the workers dominate.

This picture is more than the simple, decorative landscape it may appear to be on first examination. A work by an artist whose painting of rural and peasant scenes had made him successful, and who approached such work as someone who knew what he wanted to say and what his audience wanted to see, it is an accomplished blend of representational, moral and spiritual qualities. The rough, contorted path, passing through a narrow gateway to the haven of the Priory which links earth to heaven can be seen as a representation of the path of the soul through earthly labors to ultimate salvation; it is also a powerful reminder of the earthy quality of ordinary peoples' lives in rural France, with the mud and stones standing for the material conditions of their lives in which they were trapped.

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There is thus a social criticism present in this work as well as a spiritual message. The domination of earth over sky in terms of the area of the painting it occupies would seem to underline this aspect of the painting. However the placing of the Priory and the relative brightness of the sky, the sense of space conveyed by the sea and sky in the upper portion of the painting, contrasting so sharply with the quite congested an claustrophobic atmosphere of the earthy lower portion, suggests strongly the presence of salvation and hope. In that sense the Priory stands for the enduring qualities of the human soul and its unquenchable potential for salvation. From bottom to top, the picture goes from dark to light, and from earth to heaven. It is, in the….....

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