Portrait of Paul Javain

Portrait of Paul Javain, painted in 1841 in oil on canvas and held at the Musée Thomas-Henry, Cherbourg, is the earliest of the three Musée Thomas-Henry portraits in this batch, painted when Millet was twenty-seven and establishing himself as a portraitist in the provincial Norman capital. Paul Javain was presumably a figure from the Cherbourg bourgeoisie — the social milieu that provided Millet's early portrait clientele. The Musée Thomas-Henry's systematic collection of these early portraits documents Millet's practice with a comprehensiveness available nowhere else, making Cherbourg an essential destination for the study of his pre-Barbizon work. The 1841 date situates this at the very beginning of Millet's documented career as an independent painter.

Oil on canvas with the careful academic technique of a young painter fully trained in the conventional portrait mode. Tonal modelling from dark background into the lit face is handled with the precision of someone who has thoroughly studied Dutch and Flemish portraiture as well as the French academic tradition.