Nymphes au fond du bois

Nymphes au fond du bois (Nymphs at the Edge of the Wood), painted in 1846 on mahogany wood and held at the Phoenix Art Museum, is an early and unusual work in Millet's output — a mythological subject quite unlike the peasant pictures for which he became celebrated. In his early career Millet produced a range of mythological and allegorical works that drew on his academic training, before the decisive shift to rural subject matter that occurred around 1848-1849. The mahogany support — an unusual but not unknown choice in French painting of this period — provides a warm reddish-brown undertone that would influence the atmospheric quality of the image. The Phoenix Art Museum's holding of this early Millet reflects American collecting interest in the full range of his work, not merely the canonical Barbizon subjects.

Oil on mahogany panel, exploiting the support's warm reddish undertone to contribute to the atmospheric depth of a forest interior. The mythological subject allows Millet a more fluid, idealised figure treatment than his later rural works, with the nymph figures given a sensuous lightness quite different from the monumental gravity of his peasant women.