Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton - The Close of Day - Walters 3757

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Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton - The Close of Day - Walters 3757

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Summary

Two peasant women rest leaning on their rakes as the sun sets. Breton trained in Belgium and in Paris but remained committed to his birthplace, Courrières in the Pas-de-Calais department of northern France. His early paintings reflect a concern for the plight for the rural poor, but his later works tended to romanticize their existence.

As one of the primary painters of peasant themes in the nineteenth century, and an artist strongly influenced by his own native traditions from northern France, Jules Breton’s reputation rivaled that of Eugène Delacroix or Jean-Dominique Ingres at the time of his death in 1906. Since then, after a long period of relative obscurity, Breton has returned to considerable favor; he is now regarded as a primary painter of daily life with an inherent and substantial understanding of the old masters form the Italian renaissance especially Raphael. The latter artists helped Breton fashion a highly idealist version of peasant beauty.

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Date

1865
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Source

Walters Art Museum
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