20 Facts About Jules Breton

Jules Breton's 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.

Jules Breton's mother died when Jules was four and he was brought up by his father.

Jules Breton met the painter Felix De Vigne in 1842 who, impressed by his youthful talent, persuaded his family to let him study art.

Jules 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, Jules Breton moved to Antwerp where he took lessons with Egide Charles Gustave Wappers and spent some time copying the works of Flemish masters.

Jules Breton met and became friends with several of the Realist painters, including Francois Bonvin and Gustave Brion and his early entries at the Paris Salon reflected their influence.

Jules Breton 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.

Jules Breton received commissions from the State and many of his works were purchased by the French Art Administration and sent to provincial museums.

Jules Breton's 1857 painting Blessing of the Wheat, Artois was exhibited at the Salon the same year and won a second class medal.

Jules Breton continued to exhibit throughout the 1870s and into the 1880s and 1890s and his reputation grew.

Jules Breton was extremely popular in his own time, exhibiting numerous compositions at the Salons that were widely available as engravings.

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

Also in 1886, Jules Breton was elected a member of the Institut de France on the death of Baudry.

In 1889 Jules Breton was made commander of the Legion of Honor, and in 1899 foreign member of the Royal Academy of London.

Jules Breton wrote several books, and was a recognized writer who published a volume of poems and several editions of prose relating his life as an artist and the lives of other artists that he personally knew; among them Les Champs et la mer, Nos peintres du siecle, Delphine Bernard, and La Peinture.

Arguably, Jules Breton's fame peaked posthumously in 1934 at The Chicago World's Fair.

The American art establishment of the 1930s considered works of Jules Breton to be lowbrow and the director of the Art Institute of Chicago itself argued for the removal of the work from display.

Ironically, in a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh mentions he viewed Jules Breton's painting The Song of the Lark and considered it to be "fine".

In 1898 Knoedler published a catalog of their prints and listed 8 prints after Jules Breton including The Evening etched by Charles Waltner, 4 prints etched by Lionel Aristide Lecouteux, The Song of the Lark by Charles Louis Kratke, and Last Ray by Paul-Adolphe Rajon.

Works by Jules Breton are still popular today and are being reproduced in giclee framed and unframed as well as everything from shopping bags to pillows and bed covers as well as tee-shirts and coffee mugs.