First Steps, after Millet

First Steps, after Millet, painted in January 1890 and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, belongs to Van Gogh's extensive series of translations of works by Jean-François Millet — the painter he revered above all others. Confined at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole and frequently unable to work outdoors, Van Gogh made painted translations of Millet's black-and-white prints in a sustained program of creative engagement he described as 'improvising color' from memory and imagination. First Steps — showing a father bending forward to receive a toddler's first uncertain steps while the mother supports the child from behind — was particularly meaningful to Van Gogh for its tenderness and universality. His Millet translations number over forty works.

Van Gogh translates Millet's engraved line into painted stroke and invents color where the original offered only tone. His Saint-Rémy palette assigns warm yellows and blues to the garden scene — the father's blue-smocked figure, the yellow-green of grass and flowering shrubs, the warm tones of the rustic fence. The paint handling is confident and expressive: Millet's solid peasant figures are rendered with the same energized brushwork Van Gogh brought to all his subjects. The composition remains faithful to Millet while being entirely Van Gogh in execution.