My Mill by Louis Aston Knight
Daniel Ridgway Knight became known as an American expatriate artist working in France. In a way, he became a successor to Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton by creating beautifully executed scenes of French peasant life. However, his son, Louis Aston Knight, agreed to distinguish himself by intentionally excluding figures from most of his paintings, focusing primarily on landscapes.
From his home in Beaumont-le-Roger in Normandy, Aston Knight explored the northern French countryside and captured its serenity in a slightly paradoxical way. By working within the tradition of French landscape painting, Aston Knight followed in the footsteps of the Barbizon artists, such as Théodore Rousseau and Charles-François Daubigny. Many Barbizon artists painted en plein air, leading to looser brushstrokes and increasingly Impressionistic techniques. Aston Knight, however, painted outdoors (often painting in the river itself, wearing rubber waders) while maintaining a refined, academic style. While many of his paintings are often devoid of figures, the typical signs of humanity present are small houses, cottages, and mills, usually sitting on the banks of a river. He treated these structures as if they were part of the natural landscape itself, existing independently of their human creation. No smoke billows from the chimney, and no farmers arrive to have their grain processed into flour. The riverside mill, the subject of the painting, is a cornerstone of French village life, yet there are no villagers present.
However, the lack of figures does not seem strange. It’s almost like an invitation, with Aston Knight beckoning the viewer to step through the frame, walk through the long grass, and go inside to pick up their freshly ground barley or buckwheat. For many viewers at the time of its creation, My Mill relies on nostalgia. With industrialized cities steadily growing and becoming the economic and cultural centers of many countries, well-executed scenes of quaint cottages and riverside wash-houses provided many people with comfort and calm. It is the essence of escapism.