La Bouillie

A peasant mother sits with her baby across her lap and blows on a spoonful of porridge to cool it before the child can eat. Millet painted this small, tender scene in 1861, and the same year he had it turned into an etching with the printmaker Bracquemond. It is worth remembering what else he was doing then. Around 1860 to 1862 his Man with a Hoe, a heavy, exhausted farm labourer, provoked an uproar in Paris, where some critics read his peasants as a socialist threat. A mother feeding her child gave the public a warmer, safer Millet to like. The city of Marseille bought this canvas in 1869, and it has stayed in its museum ever since.