My dear Rousseau, I do not know if the two sketches which I enclose will be of any use to you. I merely wish to show you where I would place the figu… - Jean-François Millet

Barbizon Thursday, My dear [Alfred] Sensier: M. Letrone, whom I do not know.. ..came yesterday [to the house of Millet in Barbizon], and bought my 'Women Putting Bread in the Oven', for 800 francs, and another little picture which I am to make from a sketch which he has seen for 400 francs. This gentleman has a son who has been, and, for all I know, may be still, a pupil of Rousseau. I am working, in spite of frequent interruptions, at my picture of 'A Woman Sewing by the Light of a Lamp' for the Dutchman [a buyer who ordered the painting]. It is already in a forward state, but trivial matters disturb me too often.

For the first [his very first time in Paris], I went to a little hotel, where I spent the night in a sort of nightmare, in which I saw my home, full of melancholy, with my mother, grandmother, and sister spinning in the evening, weeping and thinking of me, praying that I should escape the perdition of Paris. Then the evil demon drove me on before wonderful pictures, which seemed so beautiful, so brilliant, that it appeared to me they took fire and vanished in a heavenly cloud.. .Finally, without knowing how, I found myself [during one of his his first days in Paris] on the Pont Neuf, from which I saw a magnificent building which I thought must be the Louvre, from the descriptions I had heard of it. I went to it, and mounted the great stairway with a beating heart. At last one great object of my life was attained. I had imagined correctly what I should see. It seemed to me that I was in a world of friends [the paintings of the old masters], in a family where all that I beheld was the reality of my dreams.

You are sitting under the trees, feeling all the ease, all the tranquility that can possibly be enjoyed; you see some poor figure laden with a faggot come turning out of some little path. The unexpected and always striking way in which this figure appears to you carries your mind instantly to the sadness of human life.. .In tilled lands you see these figures digging and delving. From time to time you see one straighten his loins and wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. Is this the gay frolicsome work in which some people would have us believe? Yet here for me is the real humanity, the great poetry.