Art Institute of Chicago

The Song of the Lark

Jules Breton (French, 1827–1906)

Date

1884

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

France

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

A lone peasant girl pauses her work to listen to a lark singing in the distance. Her emotional response to this moment of natural beauty is accentuated by the glow of the sun rising behind her, suffusing the landscape with golden light. Jules Breton specialized in scenes of rustic life in the countryside. Having been raised in the rural village of Courrières in northern France, he admired the people living there for their resourcefulness and connection to nature and gained immense popularity by painting them in his idealized style.

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