Portrait of Mark Twain

The dynamic portrait of Mark Twain, Samuel W. Clemens, signed and dated 1877 in the lower left, came about because Twain and Millet were good friends for many years.  In fact they were so close that when Millet was married Twain made the long ocean voyage to Europe so he could be one of Millets at his wedding in Paris to Lily.  Twain was a witness along with another good friend Augustus Saint Gaduins, the noted sculptor.

The date is confirmed because of some correspondence between Twain and another friend, H. Hoyesen:

https://scholarlyediting.org/2017/editions/aprilfools/UCLC41846.html.                                            S. L. Clemens Esq | Hartford | Conn. [postmarked:] new york mar 31 9 pm G 84 [docketed by SLC, in pencil:] Millet

“Frank Millet was a close personal friend. In January 1877 he painted a portrait of Clemens, which the latter deemed “most excellent” in a letter to H. Boyesen on 17 January 1877.

“Mr. Millet the artist has made a most excellent portrait of me, & besides has given us a week of social enjoyment, for his company is a high pleasure. We have to lose him tomorrow.”

Three years later Clemens was best man at Millet’s wedding in Paris. Millet, along with R. Swain Gifford, was a member of Society of American Artists.” 

Twain lost his amiable friend when the Titanic sank in 1912. A few years latter Twain recalled the humanity of Millet, in a 1917 Harpers Magazine article, pps.303-304, by comparing a notable history writer and Harvard Professor George Ticknor to Millet:

“Ticknor is a Millet, who makes all men fall in love with him.” [Twain adds:] “Millet was the cause of lovable qualities in people, and then he admired and loved those persons for the very qualities which he (without knowing it) had created in them.  Perhaps it would be strictly truer of these two men to say that they bore within them the divine something in whose presence the evil in people fled away and hid itself, while all that was good in them came spontaneously forward out of the forgotten walls and corners in their systems where it was accustomed to hide.”

This assessment of Millet and Ticknor, from the foremost satirist in American history is even more amazing when realizing it is Twain who penned these feelings.  Rarely did Twain not find something in everyone he met that was not quite “divine,” and worthy of some humor found in their failings.