Stories Pictures Tell Book One

Excerpt

FEEDING HER BIRDS

Original Picture: Lille Museum, Lille, France.

Artist: Jean François Millet (zhäN fräN´swä´´ mÄ“´lÄ•´´).

Birthplace: Gruchy, France.

Dates: Born, 1814; died, 1875.

Questions to arouse interest. What do you see in this picture? What are the children doing? Where do they live? On what are they sitting? Whom can you see behind the house? What is he doing? What do you think the children were doing before their mother called them? why? What does the hen expect? What else do you see in the picture? What time of day do you think it is? Why is this picture called "Feeding Her Birds"? How many like it? why?

The story of the picture. In a tiny white cottage in a little village in France, lived a painter with his wife and nine children. This painter's name was Jean François Millet, and although quite poor his was a very happy family. Nearly every morning the father worked hard in his garden behind the house, and every afternoon in a queer little old room he called his studio. Here he painted beautiful pictures of places and people he saw and loved. Almost all of his pictures are of the country and of people who worked, because he knew most about them and because he loved them best.

Sometimes he finished his work in the garden very early, and then he was glad, for he liked better to paint than to do anything else in the world.

One day when he looked out through the window of his studio he saw a much prettier picture than the one he was painting. He saw three of his children sitting in a row on the doorstep, while the mother fed broth to each of them in turn from a wooden spoon. As they crowded close together they reminded him of some little birds he had been watching that morning. You know how little birds open their bills and crowd toward the edge of the nest when the mother bird feeds them? Millet thought he would paint this picture, and name it "Feeding Her Birds."

See how the mother tips forward on the stool as she bends toward the three children. That is a wooden spoon she holds in her hand, and it is full of hot broth from the bowl in her lap. The children seem to be very hungry. No doubt they have been playing hard all the morning.

It is easy to see with what the little girl at the left-hand side of the picture has been playing. She holds her wooden doll very close, and loves it just as much as if it were china and had real hair as your own doll has. She is the eldest of the children, and you can see she is unselfish because she sits patiently by while her baby brother and little sister get the first taste of the delicious broth.

The boy and the younger girl must have been playing with the basket and cart you see in the picture, for the basket is overturned as if it had been dropped in a hurry when the mother came to the door with the broth. Now the playthings are quite forgotten.

The boy opens his mouth wide as he leans forward for the first taste, while the little sister puts her arm around him to hold him steady. As she watches him, she opens her mouth, too....