Jules Breton

A painter of peasant landscapes, highly regarded across Europe and America, Jules Breton was one of the most celebrated artists of his generation. He was strongly influenced by Millet and the Barbizon School, but romanticized the peasants and concentrated on more idealized compositions.

Breton was born on May 1, 1827 in Courrières, a small Pas-de-Calais village. His mother died when Jules was four and he was brought up by his father, Marie-Louis Breton, who supervised land for a wealthy landowner. Other family members who lived in the same house were his maternal grandmother and his uncle, Boniface Breton. A respect for tradition, as well as a love of the land and of 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 of 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, as well as 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.

In Paris, he studied in the atelier of the Michel Martin Drolling. He met and became friends with several of the Realist painters, including François Bonvin and Gustave Brion, and his early entries at the Paris Salon reflected their influence. His first efforts were in historical subjects. The Salon displayed his painting Misery and Despair in 1849 and Hunger in 1850-51. Both paintings have since been destroyed.

After Hunger was successfully shown in Brussels and Ghent, Breton moved to Belgium where he met his future wife Elodie. 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.

Breton married Elodie de Vigne in 1858.

From 1855 until the end of the 1890s, the artist's representations of the peasant women of his native land earned him prominence as a major interpreter of French rural life. Breton’s depictions of joyful labor, bountiful harvests, restful moments of contemplation, peasant celebrations, and long-practiced religious customs offered a vision of rustic beauty by turns gay and cheerful, grave and melancholy, but always serene, harmonious, and imbued with poetic sentiment. Awarded France’s highest medals for achievement, Breton was also a noted poet and author.