"Naturalist Painter" Jules Breton Hand Written Letter Dated 1921 For Sale

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"Naturalist Painter" Jules Breton Hand Written Letter Dated 1921:
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for sale a RARE! "Naturalist Painter" Jules Breton Hand Written Letter (Untranslated French) Dated 1921.

ES-6491

Jules

Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (1

May 1827 – 5 July 1906) was a paintings are heavily influenced by the French countryside and his

absorption of traditional methods of painting helped make Jules Breton one of

the primary transmitters of the beauty and idyllic vision of rural existence. Breton

was born on 1 May 1827 in Courrières,

a small Pas-de-Calais village. His father,

Marie-Louis Breton, supervised land for a wealthy landowner. His mother died

when Jules was 4 and he was brought up by his father. Other family members who

lived in the same house were his maternal grandmother, his younger

brother, Émile, and his uncle Boniface Breton. A respect for tradition,

a love of the land and for 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 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 and the 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 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: Saint

Piat preaching in Gaul then, under the influence of the revolution of

1848, he represented Misery and Despair. 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. 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, offer

$45,000 at a New York sale for Breton's work The Communicants (1884). At

that time, the price was the 2nd highest price paid for a painting by a living

artist. This

same painting changed hands again in 2016 and commanded $1.27 million. That

figure is very close to the 1886 sale price after adjusting for inflation.

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

In 1887 New York art dealer M. Knoedler, ordered

two paintings from Breton, commissioned Charles Albert Waltner to etch

the grand Salon work the Recall of the

Gleaners (1859) and then held a special

exhibition of his works in 1888. In 1889

Breton was made commander of the Legion of Honor, and in 1899 foreign member of

the Royal Academy of London. His brother Emile, an architect by training, and

his daughter Virginie were also painters. He also wrote several books, and was

a recognized writer who published a volume of poems (Jeanne) 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 (1876), Nos

peintres du siècle (1900), Delphine Bernard (1902),

and La Peinture (1904). Breton died in Paris on 5 July 1906. 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 a first-class medal; Grandfather's Birthday (1862); The

Close of 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 Finistère (1881); The Song of the

Lark (1884); The Last Star (1887); The Call Home (1889); The

Last Gleanings (1895); Gathering Poppies (1897); The

Alarm Cry (1899); Twilight Glory (1900). Arguably,

Breton's fame peaked posthumously in 1934 at The Chicago World's Fair. First Lady

Eleanor Roosevelt unveiled The Song of the Lark as

the winner of the Chicago Daily News contest to find the

"most beloved work of art in America". Further, she declared the

painting as being her personal favorite painting. "At

this moment The Song of the Lark had come to represent the

popular American artistic taste on a national level." Of

course, since The Song of the Lark was recently given to

the Art Institute of Chicago this

particular work of Breton had an advantage over Breton works at other American

museums. Breton, however, was not universally appreciated. The American art

establishment of the 1930s considered works of Breton to be lowbrow and the director

of the Art Institute of Chicago itself argued for the removal of the work from

display. It

was not until the later half of the twentieth century, that Breton's social realism

became more respectable again. To a degree, one can argue that

posthumously Breton's fame fell victim to the success during his lifetime. His

most detailed works either went straight into museums or were collected by the

likes of Henry Clay Frick, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, the Morgan family, Henry Huntington and the Field

family. These were collectors of such great wealth that they tended

to either donate their collections to their favorite local museum or founded

their own museum such as the Huntington. Meanwhile, the exponential 19th century flooded

the market with inexpensive prints of Breton's works. In 2019, dozens of these

19th century prints are available on websites like  beginning at

under $10.Breton's change in fame can be contrasted with his contemporary the

artist Vincent van Gogh. During their lifetimes, Breton

was a celebrated and highly paid successful artist. He spent months creating

some of his works. Whereas, in 1880 Vincent van

Gogh was so poor he walked on foot 85 kilometers to Courrières to

pay a visit to Breton, whom he greatly admired, but turned back, put off by

Breton's high wall No great collectors flocked to purchase van Gogh's

works during his lifetime, he received no commissions to paint from New York

City, no prints were made while he lived, and he died in poverty. However, at a

2015 sale van Gogh's work Paysage Sous

un ciel Mouvement, painted at a time he generated one work per day, commanded

$54 million. Ironically, in a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh

mentions he viewed Breton's painting The Song of the Lark and

considered it to be "fine".

"Naturalist Painter" Jules Breton Hand Written Letter Dated 1921

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Photo:John James Audubon,1785-1851,French naturalist,painter

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