Bird's Nesters

Bird's Nesters was a painting created by Jean-Francois Millet in 1874 in France. Millet produced this painting at the very end of his life while in Barbizon school during the realism art movement. This movement showed interests in pure landscapes, lighting, and scenes of peasant farmers. The painting depicts four people who have gone out to hunt wild pigeons from a flock gathering in the trees. One of the hunters is facing the trees and uses a torch to scare the birds into flight. He seems to run with a short stick to beat the pigeons into the air. The other one is facing the viewer carrying a load of hay in his back to top up their torch as it burns. Two other figures are crawling on the ground, gathering up as much as they can of the fallen birds. The forest creates a green backdrop of the grisly scene, brightly decorated birds flying filled with fear in all directions. The view is drawn from miller’s childhood memories of bird hunters causing temporary blindness with torchlights and then clubbing them. Millet used the oil on canvas medium to make this painting. This style of painting was first used in Eastern cultures. Later on, it was adopted by European countries and became well-liked, the reason being that it came with very many advantages. It involved first boiling the oil to form a glossy varnish, then mixing the colours with oil. Oil on canvas takes long to dry; therefore, giving the artist enough time to make any changes to the painting. Bon Du Mouchel, a portrait painter, received Millet after being sent by his father to help him study. Millet inspired a few artists, for example, Vincent van Gogh in the early stages of his artwork. Claude Monet used Millet’s late landscapes to influence his paintings of the coast Normandy. He also inspired Georges Seurat as well due to his structural and symbolic content. Millet had several other famous paintings, such as The Gleaners (1857), The Sower (1850), and The Angelus (1859) and The Potato Harvest (1855). Bird's Nesters is housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the United States. The image is in the public domain in its country of origin, as well as other countries where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer.