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| SONG OF THE LARK - By Jules Breton. This oil
painting by the celebrated French painter, who is now sixty-seven
years old, is the property of Mrs. Henry Field, of Chicago, and was
loaned to the United States collection. It hung on the south wall of
Gallery 41, in the east annex of the Art Palace. We have previously
illustrated Breton's "Young Girls Going to the Procession," which was
exhibited in the French Section close at hand.
THE MAN WITH THE HOE - By J. F. Millet. The leader of the
Barbizon school, whose "Angelus" startled the world upon its sale to
America and repurchase by France, after payment of a tax of some
$30,000, was represented at Chicago by six of his pictures of
peasants and one of his earlier works, named "After The Bath," which
demonstrated his ability to paint the nude with all the sensuousness
of Bougereau. Had Millet continued to delineate these nude figures,
as Delaroche taught him to do, he need not have suffered for potatoes
and onions, which he could not earn with the canvases that are now
valued so highly by the people who possess them. The ancient
painters wrought saintdom on these subjects by means of the aureole,
halo and nimbus. On Millet's peasants there is an emanation of
light, and these scenes in the field shine so that neighboring
pictures look dull and shadowy, no matter how high their conventional
lights. It was the influence of his grandmother, Louise Jumetin,
that led Millet to forsake the nude in art. |
