The Song of the Lark
Jules Breton (French, 1827–1906)
1884
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 110.6 × 85.8 cm (43 1/2 × 33 3/4 in.); Framed: 142.3 × 116.9 cm (56 × 46 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Henry Field Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
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.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
