Breton, Jules (1827-1906) - The Tired Gleaner 1880

Artwork by French Realist artist, Jules Breton.

This download consists of 1 image, in jpeg format, that is 300dpi and 5348 pixels wide by 7866 pixels tall.

The picture is out of copyright and in the public domain, so you are free to use it in whatever way you'd like, including commercial use.

Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (1827-1906) was a 19th-century French realist painter. His paintings are heavily influenced by the French countryside and his absorption of traditional methods of painting helped make him one of the primary transmitters of the beauty and idyllic vision of rural existence.

Breton was born on 1 May 1827 in Courrières, a small Pas-de-Calais village. His father, Marie-Louis Breton, supervised land for a wealthy landowner. His mother died when Jules was four and he was brought up by his father. Other family members who lived in the same house were his maternal grandmother, his younger brother, Émile, and his uncle Boniface Breton. A respect for tradition, a love of the land and for his native region remained central to his art throughout his life and provided the artist with many scenes for his Salon compositions.

His first artistic training was not far from Courrières at the College St. Bertin near Saint-Omer. He met the painter Félix De Vigne in 1842 who, impressed by his youthful talent, persuaded his family to let him study art. Breton left for Ghent in 1843 where he continued to study art at the Academy of Fine Arts with de Vigne and the painter Hendrik Van der Haert. In 1846, Breton moved to Antwerp where he took lessons with Egide Charles Gustave Wappers and spent some time copying the works of Flemish masters. In 1847, he left for Paris where he hoped to perfect his artistic training at the École des Beaux-Arts.

After one of his paintings, Hunger was successfully shown in Brussels and Ghent in 1851, Breton moved to Belgium where he met his future wife Elodie, who he later married in 1858. Elodie was the daughter of his early teacher Félix de Vigne. In 1852, Breton returned to France. But he had discovered that he was not born to be a historical painter, and he returned to the memories of nature and of the country which were impressed on him in early youth.

In 1853 he exhibited Return of the Reapers, the first of numerous rural peasant scenes influenced by the works of the Swiss painter Louis Léopold Robert. Breton's interest in peasant imagery was well established from then on and what he is best known for today. In 1854, he returned to the village of Courrières where he settled. He began The Gleaners, a work inspired by seasonal field labor and the plight of the less fortunate who were left to gather what remained in the field after the harvest. The Gleaners received a third class medal, which launched Breton's career. He received commissions from the State and many of his works were purchased by the French Art Administration and sent to provincial museums. His 1857 painting Blessing of the Wheat, Artois was exhibited at the Salon the same year and won a second class medal.

He was one of the best known painters of his period in his native France as well as England and the United States.

In 1886, a bidder paid $45,000 at a New York auction for Breton's work The Communicants (1884). At that time, the price was the second highest price paid for a painting by a living artist. The painting changed hands again in 2016 and commanded $1.27 million. That figure is very close to the 1886 auction price after adjusting for inflation. Also in 1886, Breton was elected a member of the Institut de France on the death of Baudry.

In 1889 Breton was made commander of the Legion of Honor, and in 1899 foreign member of the Royal Academy of London. His brother Emile, an architect by training, and his daughter Virginie were also painters.

Willa Cather's 1915 novel The Song of the Lark takes its name from Breton's 1884 painting.

In February 2014, actor Bill Murray disclosed at a press event for the film The Monuments Men, that a chance encounter with Breton's The Song of the Lark at the Art Institute of Chicago helped him at a low point in his early career.