Millet was son of a peasant from Normandy, the eldest eight children. He began to draw very when he was still working on the farm. In 1883 he started lessons with the painter Dumoncel, otherwise known as Mouchel, his Cherbourg studio, and in 1885 went Langlois de Chevreville to study. He awarded a scholarship by the municipality of Cherbourg, and so was able to go to Paris. He settled there in 1837 and became a student Paul Delaroche's studio as well as working at the Louvre and the Academic Suisse. When he returned to Cherbourg, hepainted
portraits and shop signs, and also attempted some nudes. After his marriage he went to live in Barbizon, where he became known as one of the artists of the realist school, his subjects being mostly simple workers and peasants. The critics were unfavorable and he was called 'a painter of low life' and revolutionary. But his friends, including the  painter Theodore Rousseau, supported him, and towards  the end of his life he finally became famous.
Like Courbet and Rousseau, he may be considered as anticipating Impressionism in some his paintings, in his love of nature and his feeling for light. This was particularly evident in his final period, when his tones became lighter and he made more use of bright reflection and highlights; at the same time his opaque shadows were lightened through his –multiplicity of close, lively brushstrokes that made his surfaces shine and reflect the light”.

Based on Phaidon encyclopedia of Impressionism, Maurice Serullaz, Phaidon, 1978