Harvesting the Oil Poppies (1896)

Jules Breton: Harvesting the Oil Poppies

Summer (1891)

Jules Breton: Summer

Morning (1888)

Jules Breton: Morning

The Shepherd's Star (1887)

Jules Breton: The Shepherd's Star

Barefoot and carrying a heavy sack of potatoes on her head, a young peasant woman returns from the fields in the early evening as Capella, the "shepherd's star," rises over her shoulder. Although the model was an actual agricultural worker from the artist's native village in the Artois region of northern France, Jules Breton gives the figure a classical monumentality and timelessness that avoids any commentary on her social position. Rather, the painting presents an idealized and romanticized image of the French peasant as the heroic embodiment of a traditional, idyllic way of life—one that was rapidly disappearing in the nineteenth century under the pressures of the Industrial Revolution.

Unlike the more frank, unsentimental images of peasants by such French Realist artists as Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet, Breton sought to ennoble his scenes with the aura of history painting—the depiction of scenes of battle, great deeds, or mythological stories-that-was the most revered genre of the French arbiter of taste, the Académie des Beaux-Arts. As the critic Arsène Houssaye wrote of The Shepherd's Star in 1888, "imagine that she carried on her back a sheaf of wheat instead of a sack of potatoes, and then she could be the personification of harvesting. She would be a modern Ceres." [Toledo Museum of Art]

Afternoon Repast (1885)

Jules Breton: Afternoon Repast

The Song of the Lark (1884)

Jules Breton: The Song of the Lark

She’s not pretty; she’s a little bit mannish, actually— her feet are a little too large, her hands too strong on the handle of the scythe, her eyes too dark behind heavy brows. The empty field where she stands is harsh, with flat dirt extending for a long way before touching a green border far in the background. A mottled red sun rises behind her, heralding the dawn, but even that has little inherent beauty.

Yet the look of searching wonder in her face is touching, even breathtaking. All the emotion of The Song of the Lark by Jules Breton is imbued with the implied things outside the canvas, lending the dull, mundane scene a romantic tinge.

This 1884 painting is an example of the Realist movement, the quiet browns, dim greens and lazy reds somehow given life by the thin white of the girl’s shirt. Rough textures that resemble Courbet’s The Stonecutters surround her, but the smoothness of her dirt-smudged skin clearly marks her as more important than the background.

Many paintings from the 19th century address the topic of ordinary peasant life, but the specific focus makes this one special. Whereas other artists chose to portray ordinary tasks, full of people going about their daily work in a brightly colored country scene, The Song of the Lark depicts a rare quiet moment at the very beginning of the day. The lull between night and dawn is the most peaceful time; looking at the solitary girl in the half-light gives off a sense of relaxation, not unlike lying in bed just after waking, watching the light slowly edge up the wall. [Columbia College Chicago]

Les Communiantes (1884)

Jules Breton: Les Communiantes

At the beginning of the nineteenth century grand Salon submissions of religious subjects were encouraged, reinforced by the monarchy’s mutual support of church and state. Breton had tried his hand at large religious canvases while he was a student, including Saint Piat prêchent dans les Gaules (1846), an unfinished Chemin de Croix (1847) and Baptême de Christ (1851), all of which have since disappeared, but as the French political environment changed, so did the expectations of official artists. Large biblical narratives were abandoned by artists who instead sought to represent the Divine through humanity and the everyday. To this end, the representation of working people in rural France, and especially their religious rituals, pageants and processions, took on a special significance. If the abrupt and radical Realism of Gustave Courbet’s 1850 Salon submission, Burial at Ornans did not ignite a broader movement in Realist art, it can be used, retrospectively, as a mid-century pivot point that happens to coincide with the initiation of Breton’s formidable career as an artist. Reexamination of Breton’s oeuvre, accolades and commercial success reveals that he was answering the call of the Realist and Naturalist movements while simultaneously participating in the Academic system, and Les Communiantes gives clear evidence.

As the self-proclaimed "peasant who paints peasants," Jules Breton achieved recognition from his first Salon entry in 1849, and quickly earned recognition from his peers including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Constant Troyon and Vincent Van Gogh, among others.  Breton’s inspiration came from the real working people of rural France, and he achieved great commercial success by imbuing his subject with a certain amount of the ideal. Throughout his career, the theme of religious traditions allowed him to explore the spiritual heart of rural communities, notably in Brittany and Courrières, where he lived. One of the earliest paintings to explore the subject of communicants is Les Premières Communiantes à Courrières (circa 1860), and foreshadows his inclination to the present subject which would be conceived more than twenty years later in response to a commission from the influential American agent, Samuel P. Avery. [Sotheby’s]

On the Road in Winter; Artois (1884)

Jules Breton: On the Road in Winter; Artois

Sur la route en hiver; Artois poetically illustrates how Jules Breton, a self-proclaimed “peasant who paints peasants,” drew artistic inspiration from the working people of rural France.  In the present work, as with much of his painting in the period, villagers from Courrières serve as models: Bibi (the daughter of a mine worker) and Henry (one of Breton’s favorites).  Just as the harvesters returning from late summer’s golden fields, these winter wanderers are elevated to icons of country life.

As recorded in his wife Elodie Breton’s diary entries, the artist began Sur la route en hiver; Artois on March 17, 1881, after a harsh winter had left the fields of Courrières covered in snow.  Although other projects diverted his attentions, Breton completed this work by February 1884 and exhibited it to great acclaim at the Salon of that year.

Just as the present work inspired critics to wax poetic, it also inspired Breton, a poet himself, to write three stanzas, which he exhibited alongside the painting at the Salon: 

Boundless as the sea, a mantle soft and new,
Across the landscape, a snow all virgin lies;
Emerging far beyond, to heavens lone and blue,
A vision tender, soft, golden green in hue
In dazzling beauty, see fair Diana rise!

In western skies, slow sinking to his night’s repose,
Out from the conch which filmy mist enfolds,
The radiant sun his countless gleaming javelins throws;
Beneath his ancient kiss the boy, pale moon now glows,
As, shrinking, she that ruddy face beholds.

The lily white expanse, so sparkling, billowy, vast,
Takes from th’illumining flood a rosy stain;
White purplish, pallid shade the countless hummocks east;
And seems the bounty of a thousand Aprils past,
To shower the glistening, efflorescent plain.

[Sotheby's]

Young Girl Eating Cherries (1876)

Jules Breton: Young Girl Eating Cherries

The Feast of Saint John (ca.1875)

Jules Breton: The Feast of Saint John

"I recently saw Jules Breton with his wife and two daughters. Physically he reminded me of J. Maris, though he has dark hair.

When I have the chance I’ll send you a book of his, Les champs et la mer, which contains all his poems.

He has a beautiful painting at the Salon, The Feast of St John, peasant girls dancing on a summer evening round the St John’s bonfire, in the background the village with its church and the moon above it.

    Dance, young maidens, dance,
    As you sing your songs of love!
    Tomorrow, at break of day,
    You’ll go, hastening to ply your sickles."

[Letter from Vincent Van Gogh to Theo Van Gogh, Monday, 31 May 1875]

Jules Breton (1873)

 Jules Breton: Collector of Figs

  

Jules Breton: Peasant at Rest

Returning from the Fields (1871)

Jules Breton: Returning From the Fields

Although often associated with the Barbizon school, Breton favored a more idealized treatment of his subjects and a more polished style of painting. In this rural scene, probably set in the artist's native Pas-de-Calais, north of Paris, three young women return from the fields at dusk. Their idealized forms contrast markedly with the harshness of Millet's depictions of peasant life. [The Walters Art Museum]

The Weeders (1868)

Jules Breton: The Weeders

This is a smaller variant of a composition Breton painted in 1860 (Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha) and exhibited to wide acclaim at the Salon of 1861 and the World’s Fair of 1867 in Paris. In his autobiography, Breton described this twilight scene of peasants pulling up thistles and weeds—"their faces haloed by the pink transparency of their violet hoods, as if to venerate a fecundating star"—noting that he had discovered the subject as a "finished picture" near his native village, Courrières, in northern France. [Metropolitan Museum of Art]

Repose (1867)

Jules Breton: Repose

This drawing dates from perhaps the most formally successful decade of Breton's career. The artist represents a young woman lost in dreamy contemplation as she pauses for rest during the harvest. Her fellow harvesters continue to work behind her, and there are haystacks visible in the distance. The contrast is notable between the highly finished manner of the resting woman and the far sketchier treatment of the landscape background and secondary figures. The resting woman is characteristic of Breton's classicizing treatment of form in the 1860s, but it may also reflect an awareness of more recent sources. [The Walters Art Museum]

Young Harvester Asleep on Sheaves of Wheat (1866)

Jules Breton: Young Harvester Asleep on Sheaves of Wheat

Young Brittany Girl Knitting (1866)

Jules Breton: Young Brittany Girl Knitting

As a result of government-sponsored ethnographic studies in the nineteenth century, Brittany, France’s northwestern province, was deemed a rustic, if not entirely archaic, region; its people held firmly to the language, religion and cultural traditions of their sixth century Celtic ancestors. This inspired thongs of travelers curious to experience the uniquely preserved culture firsthand.  One such visitor was Jules Breton, who visited Brittany for the fist time in 1865, staying in and around the Baie de Douarnenez, notable for its tuna and sardine fisheries (Annette Bourrut Lacouture, Jules Breton, Painter of Peasant Life, exh. cat., New Haven, 2002, p. 137-139). During his stays, Breton explored the sandy beaches, observing washerwomen and other hard-working peasants, recording their daily tasks in classically inspired arrangements on large canvases. Yet, as demonstrated by the present work, the artist was equally compelled by the darker thickets of Douarnenez, filled with craggy granite rocks, dense patches of moss, and twisted roots.  It is this environment of mottled deep greens and shifting tones of brown in which Breton places his Young Brittany Girl Knitting, wearing the crisp white bonnet and apron emblematic of the regional costume, coupled with a dress made up of three distinct, somber color blocks of deep red-brown, blue and black.  Her knitting rests in her lap, temporarily forgotten as her glance is directed to the left, unaware of the viewer’s presence and thus available for close study. The girl’s unselfconscious yet studied pose arose out of Breton’s fascination with the specific physiognomy of Brittany’s women. As he explained “there are those with straight profiles, prominent brows and chins, big lips, powerful square jaws, blue eyes and eyelids slit to the brow; there are the Gallo-Roman type so beloved of Michelangelo.  Then there is the gazelle with the supple neck… slanting eyes with pupils set like black diamonds in brilliant white enamels; fine features etched firmly in olive-toned bronze.  The first reminded one of the dolmens of the Celtic forest, the others of the harems of the Orient” (Jules Breton, La Vie d’un artiste, Art et Nature, Paris, 1890, p. 300, as quoted in Bourrut Lacouture, pp. 143-144).  While Breton is careful to record the knitter’s unique physical characteristics, his portrait does not reduce her to an ethnic stereotype or impersonal genre character. Rather, the artist’s naturalistic handling of paint and intimate composition provide for an individualized expression of youthful beauty. [Sotheby’s]

A Breton Laundress (1865)

Jules Breton: A Breton Laundress

This work is one of a series of paintings Breton completed during his first summer visit to Douarnenez, Brittany in 1865.  The identity of the model remains unknown but she does appear drawn in a similar pose in the artist's sketch book (now held in the Breton Archives).  Unlike Breton's sunfilled compositions of laundresses on the Brittany seashore, the present work is set behind the beach in the dark woods.  Here the artist captures how the forest's filtered light highlights the laundress' white bonnet, tanned face, and strong hands in contrast with the darker tones of her blue apron, red linens, and the green and gray landscape. [Sotheby’s]

Gleaners at Sunset (1863)

Jules Breton: Gleaners at Sunset

Evening (1860)

Jules Breton: Evening

Le Rappel des Glaneuses (1859)

Jules Breton: Le Rappel des Glaneuses