Jean-François Millet was a French painter, who came from a peasant family. As a boy, he worked in his father's fields, but the engravings in an old illustrated Bible inspired him to draw, rendering the familiar scenes around him.

Millet's father decided to test the vocation of his son as an artist. Two drawings were prepared and placed before a painter at Cherbourg, who at once recognized the boy's gifts, and accepted him as a pupil. To help with his school, the town council-general had granted him a sum of 1000 francs, but in spite of this friendly gesture and introductions, Millet went through great difficulties.

The Ecole des Beaux Arts was hateful to him, and it was not until after much hesitation that he decided to enter an official studio, that of Paul Delaroche. Millet studied hard while he sought to procure bread by painting portraits at 10 or 15 francs a piece and producing small pastiches, the likes of Antoine Watteau and François Boucher.

In 1844, Millet had his first success, when his paintings attracted notice at the Salon, and friendly artists presented themselves at his lodgings only to learn that his wife had just died, and that he himself had disappeared. Millet was at Cherbourg and there he remarried. After having amassed a few hundred francs he soon went back to Paris.

Millet suffered many severe struggles over his life. Many as severe as he suffered in Paris. In 1860, he bound himself into a contract to give up all his work for three years for a sum of 1000 francs a month. His fame extended, and at the exhibition of 1867 he received a first class medal and the Legion of Honour medal but at the same moment he was grieving the the death of his faithful friend Henri Rousseau. He never completely recovered his health, and on the 20th of January 1875 he died.