A Cosey Corner

Description

Signed Lower Left: Millet 1884

Millet, who specialized in American and English costume genre paintings, first visited Broadway, the picturesque Cotswolds village, in 1884. His home and studio there would become the center of an Anglo-American artists colony to which John Singer Sargent and Henry James were frequent visitors. The costume of the figure reading in “A Cosey Corner” is a romantic re-creation of several different English eighteenth-century fashions, and the interior architecture also seems English. Several features of the room, however, correspond to a published description of the colonial New England kitchen in Millet’s East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, studio. Later in his life, Millet was active in many arts organizations, including the American Academy in Rome. Returning to New York on academy business, Millet went down on the Titanic. – Metropolitan Museum

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11583

The above photograph (owned by the Millet decedents) was taken at the Fleece Inn, in Bretforton UK which is near the Millet’s Broadway England home. Lily posed for Frank so he would have the general lighting and elements for the painting. The Inn nis still operating as a pub and is now owned by the National Trust which still maintains the similar look and feel of the 19th Century and has preserved this corner as it was when the Millet’s visited.