The Rest Is History - Greatest Paintings: The French Revolution - Millet's Angelus

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

Why was Jean-François Millet’s The Angelus considered highly controversial and politically divisive in pre-industrial 19th-century France? What do we know about his personal background, his ambiguous relationship with his subjects, and the scene of the famous Barbizon School? And, how did artists like Salvador Dalí and Vincent Van Gogh draw inspiration and reinterpret the painting?  In this new The Rest Is History Club series, Tom is joined by art critic and author Laura Cumming to discuss the histories behind famous paintings and put them in their historical contexts. To hear the full episode, and all the other exclusive new episodes from Laura and Tom's paintings  series, coming out every Wednesday for the next four weeks, join The Rest is History Club at therestishistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek + Harry Swan Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everyone. Tom Holland here and I am joined by the great Laura coming and we are looking at painting in history, four paintings that reflect a particular period in history. We'll be looking at the history of the painting itself, the life of the artist and teasing out the mysteries that shadow all four paintings. And today we will be looking at the Angelus by Jean-François Millet, mid-19th century painting, is it an expression of French Catholicism? Is it an expression of French jacquemism? Could it possibly be both? That is the mystery we will be exploring today. Hello everyone. Welcome back to our series on great paintings from history and today we have arrived at the final painting in our series and with me as she has been throughout our previous three,

episodes in this series is Laura coming and Laura Today's painting we're in mid-19th century France what is the painting Who's it by? What's going on? The painting is the Angeles

painted in 1859 by Jean-Francois who is I always think rather amusingly he's spelt M-I-L-E-T like Millets and R-M-A-I-L-I-S and I don't know

It's a sort of strange. Very confusing. Very confusing. I wanted us to look at this painting because it was and is still, I think, in La France Profonde, the most famous image of devotion in French art, but it's also, for a very long period, the most popular painting in France. And it comes a bit like the skating minister in Scotland. It comes to represent the French to the French.

There's a certain idea of France that is quite a controversial idea by the minute. 19th century. Now, so if you don't know the painting, let me just say, it's a small painting. It shows us two figures who are standing stock still, heads bent in prayer, their bodies are sort of a haloed backlit by this golden evening rays across an immense field. They have been digging potatoes. You can see unearthed potatoes not very clear around their clogged feet. And it's a man and a woman, It's a man and a woman, and away in the distance is a sort of tin tack of blue spire beneath high pink clouds. It's twilight. And what you are seeing in this painting is the moment at which the bells from that spire are ringing out across the landscape to call people on the land to prayer.

And hence the title of the painting, The Angelus, which is the prayer, which in these kind of pre-industrial days where we don't have yet, you know, watches and clocks and so on. Yeah. This happens three times a day and it marks the span of the day, sunset, noon and dusk. And I think, do you know the prayer? Yes, so it's, I mean, basically it's about Gabriel, bringing the news that Mary is to bear Christ.

There are three introductions, and then you go into the Hail Mary. So it's an expression of Catholic faith, Catholic devotion. And we are half a century, and more after the French Revolution, and the French Revolution, of course, was very anti-clerical. And so the issue of the relationship of the idea of France to Catholicism and what the role should be for the Church relative to the secular has been a massively live political issue in France since the Revolution. So it's not a neutral painting, is it? It is not a neutral painting at all.

And yet, seeing the painting, In reality, it's currently hanging here in London in a little show about Miele. It hasn't been seen in London for a very, very long time. It's usually in the Musei d'Orsay in Paris. And what you see when you're standing in front of it is not the great swelling political controversy, which surrounded it and certainly brought it huge fame. It's this sort of meditative slowness. The man's taken his hat off and you can see the imprint of the hat in his hair,

as if he wears it all the time. and the woman's apron is getting a little bit of last glowing light on it. The figures are, as always with Miele, the figures are very softly painted, very gentle. They've got this terribly hard job. They're trying to scrape a living by, you know, digging up potatoes. And it's probably, we think, late September. It's certainly that hour of the day. I mean, so, you know, art historians, as always, like to give us the exact day and the exact time and so on.

But I think it's certainly probably around about six or seven in September. And what I feel, and it has often been said about it, and it rings ho-ho true, for me, is that what you see is what you are hearing. So you hear the sound of the bells coming out across the landscape and the stillness. That ringing is coming from so far away, yet it stops them in their tracks and they bend their heads to pray. Thank you for listening. Subscribe to The Restless History Club at The Rest This History Club at The Rest This History. History.com for the entire episode. And not only the entire episode, you can hear all four episodes in the series. So unbelievable value. Rush away and sign up.

Hi, guys. It's Katty K. and Anthony Scaramucci here from The Rest Is Politics, US. We have just recorded a four-part series that's all about Donald Trump becoming the global phenomenon we know him as today. You know, Katty, I knew Donald Trump since 2005. So in this series, We rewind the clock right back and dig into the people, the events, and the scandals that built him. Yeah, we're going to take you from his days in military school, what he learned there, how he actually weirdly thrived there, to his father's ties to the Ku Klux Klan, his days as a business mogul in New York and how that really shaped his worldview and his way of doing business. And we're going to explore parts of the Trump story that you might never have even heard of. Not to mention, Kady, the nefarious trickster, Roy Kohn. Where's my Roy Cohn?

I heard him say that so many times. I mean, I was only there for 11 days, Katty. Where's my Roy Cone? Well, let me tell you something. If you want to know who Roy Cone was, you're going to tune into this series. With all the headlines that come out of Trump World every single day, we just felt there'd never really been a more important time to try to understand the America that created Donald Trump.

To listen to Episode 1 of Becoming Trump, head over to the rest is politics, US, wherever you get your podcast. Next.