Cooper Gallery artwork on loan to the National Gallery in London
18th August 2025
The Shepherdess, a c1849 drawing by Jean-Francois Millet, has recently made its way on loan from the Cooper Gallery to the National Gallery in London to feature in their exhibition Millet: Life on the Land.
Millet is one of the most significant painters associated with the nineteenth-century Barbizon School, noted for his dignified portrayals of rural workers. 2025 will be the 150th anniversary of Millet’s death in January 1875. By this date he had become well respected by artists of all nationalities and was often visited at his home in Barbizon in the Forest of Fontainebleau for consultation.
His works were eagerly collected, not least by an enthusiastic group of British collectors, resulting in a significant body of his work in UK public collections. Despite this, the last exhibition devoted to his work in this country was that at the Hayward Gallery in 1976, jointly organised with the Grand Palais, Paris.
At the heart of Millet’s work lay a concern with the rural worker, the cycle of the seasons, and the agricultural year, and he is best known for his portrayal of those who lived and worked in and around Barbizon.
The exhibition is curated by Sarah Herring who collaborated with our own curator at Barnsley Museums, Natalie Murray, mentoring Natalie through a Headley Fellowship research project into French drawings and paintings which culminated in the 2023 Light and Soul exhibition at the Cooper Gallery.
It was whilst on a visit to the Cooper Gallery that Sarah saw the drawing of the Shepherdess and subsequently requested the drawing on loan for the National Gallery’s Millet exhibition.
Millet: Life on the Land runs until 19th October 2025, and you can find out more at Millet: Life on the Land | Exhibitions | National Gallery, London
