Suffolk Gallery

Description

"Breton woman with anointing oil" 32cm x 21cm
original 19th century oil on board, with label verso P. Hombert Fils Paris
The painting is unsigned but bears a strong resemblance to the work of Jules Breton in style and subject matter. We are not stating that this is the work by Breton however it is a very competent work of the same period.

Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (1 May 1827 – 5 July 1906) was a 19th-century French Naturalist painter. His paintings are heavily influenced by the French countryside he gained a reputation as an important narrator of the artistic beauty and idyllic vision of rural existence.
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
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 where 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 continued to exhibit throughout the 1870s and into the 1880s and 1890s and his reputation grew. His poetic renderings of single peasant female figures in a landscape, posed against the setting sun, remained very popular, especially in the United States. Since his works were so popular, Breton often produced copies of some of his images. He was extremely popular in his own time, exhibiting numerous compositions at the Salons that were widely available as engravings. 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, Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, bid $45,000 at a New York auction for Breton's work The Communicants (1884).[1] At that time, the price was the 2nd highest price paid for a painting by a living artist.[2] This same painting changed hands again in 2016 and commanded $1.27 million.[3] 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.
Breton was essentially a painter of rustic life, especially in the province of Artois, which he quit only three times for short excursions: in 1864 to Provence, and in 1865 and 1873 to Brittany, whence he derived some of his happiest studies of religious scenes. His numerous subjects may be divided generally into four classes: labour, rest, rural festivals and religious festivals. Among his more important works may be named Women Gleaning, and The Day after St Sebastian's Day (1855), which gained him a third-class medal Blessing the Fields (1857), a second-class medal Erecting a Calvary (1859), now in the Lille gallery The Return of the Gleaners (1859), now in the Luxembourg Evening and Women Weeding (1861), a first-class medal Grandfather's Birthday (1862) The Close of Day (1865) Harvest (1867) Potato Gatherers (1868) The Weeders (1868) A Pardon, Brittany (1869) The Fountain (1872), medal of honour The Bonfires of St John (1875) Women mending Nets (1876), in the Douai museum A Gleaner (1877), Luxembourg Evening, Finistère (1881) The Song of the Lark (1884) The Last Sunbeam (1885) The Shepherd's Star (1887) The Call Home (1889) The Last Gleanings (1895) Gathering Poppies (1897) The Alarm Cry (1899) Twilight Glory (1900).