who was very influencial because he was used as example of reflecting socialist ideas through his work. Jean-Francois Millet specialised in depicting the people who had no possessions. Millets obstinate refusal to accept the socialist interpretations put on his work was part of the myth he created about himself as the un-educated peasant who had worked the land until he was twenty-one. Infact, he was the son of a farmer who sent him, at eighteen, to study art at Cherbourg. In 1837 he went to Paris where he became a favourite pupil of Delaroche, but was embittered by failure to win a scholarship to the French academy in Rome. From 1849 he lived in Barbizon, a village on the fringe of Fontainbleau where a group of naturalist landscape painters, led by Theodore Rosseau. But if Millet 'the peasant painter' is largely a myth he was
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