Spring (Daphnis and Chloë)

Millet had made his name painting peasants at work, gleaners bent low over a field, a couple pausing in prayer for the Angelus. So a Greek love story is a surprise. In 1865 he took a commission for a set of decorative panels on the four seasons, and for spring he reached back to an ancient tale by the writer Longus: Daphnis and Chloe, two foundlings raised by herders who fall in love as they grow up. He gave the scene his usual soft light and muted color rather than any classical polish, and set the young couple in a flowering countryside. The strange part is where the picture ended up. The Japanese collector Kojiro Matsukata bought it in 1921. After the Second World War the French state held his paintings as enemy property, and they were handed back to Japan only in 1959. To house that returned collection, Tokyo opened the National Museum of Western Art, where this Spring has hung ever since.