Jules Breton
Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (born May 1, 1827 in Courrières , Pas-de-Calais department , † July 5, 1906 in Paris ) was a French painter .
Breton was a student of Felix de Vigne with Lievin de Winne . He later moved to Michel-Martin Drolling's studio . Inspired by his teachers, Breton already borrowed the material of his first pictures from the rural areas of his surroundings. He paints the citizens and farmers of the old province of Artois (Département Pas-de-Calais) in their everyday activities, mostly in the great outdoors; but he knows how to give these simple motifs a great charm, sometimes even a high nobility and a grandeur of style, through the delicate animation and the harmonious fusion of the figures and the landscape.
Its coloring is atmospheric and powerful, its modeling sharp and plastic. He only achieved full recognition in 1857 with his painting The Blessing of the Fields , now in the Palais de Luxembourg ; there are also his gleaners from 1859. In the same year he completed his planting of a calvary and a humorous picture The Blue Monday , depicting women fetching their husbands from the tavern.
In 1858 he married a daughter of his former teacher Felix de Vigne in Paris. Virginie Demont-Breton (1859-1935) was his daughter and student.
In 1861 he exhibited the works weeders and rape durchsiebendes Girls , 1864 vintage and Grazing turkeys hütendes girls out. His main work is the painting women reapers looking at the setting sun from 1865. At the world exhibition of 1867 there were reapers sharpening his scythe and spring by the sea, women and children .
His awards include being elected a member of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris in 1886 and an honorary member (Hon. RA) of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1899.
Jules Breton died in Paris on July 5, 1906, at the age of 79, and found his final resting place on the Cimetière Montparnasse next to his friend Charles Leconte de Lisle .
Works (selection)
- Return of the Gleaners , 1859; 90 × 176 cm; Musée d'Orsay , Paris
literature
- Jules Breton: The life of an artist - art and nature . New York, 1892, reprinted e.g. B. BiblioBazaar, 2009, ISBN 1-115-29316-8 .
- Hollister Sturges: Jules Breton and the French rural tradition . Exhibition catalog, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, The Arts Publishers, New York, 1982, ISBN 0-936364-09-2 .
- Hollister Sturges (Ed.): The rural vision - France and America in the late nineteenth century . Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Univ. Nebraska Press, 1987, ISBN 0-936364-19-X . (Proceedings of a symposium in connection with the 1982 exhibition)
- Annette Bourrut-Lacouture: Jules Breton - Painter of peasant life . Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, London, 2002, ISBN 0-300-09575-9 .
- Annette Bourrut-Lacouture: Jules Breton: La chanson des blés . Exhibition catalog, Somogy éditions d'art, Paris, 2002, ISBN 2-85056-515-6 .
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Breton, Jules |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Breton, Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 1, 1827 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Courrières , Pas-de-Calais department |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 5, 1906 |
| Place of death | Paris |