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About a dozen women and men, all with pale or suntanned skin, work in a field harvesting grain in this horizontal painting. The women wear long skirts and aprons, and some wear cloths tied around their heads. The men wear long-sleeved shirts rolled up to the elbow and long pants. Closest to us and to our right of center, a woman stands facing our left in profile, holding a large, round sieve. Her dark hair is pulled back, and she wears a gold-colored, teardrop-shaped earring in the ear we can see. The sleeves of her white blouse are rolled up and a teal-blue apron is tied over a brown, ankle-length skirt above bare feet. Black seed pours from the sieve, which she holds in front of her with arms wide, onto a cloth below. To our left, a woman wearing a dark skirt, a white shirt, and a red head covering kneels on the cloth and scoops the black seed into a bucket. Next to her, a girl wearing a brown dress sits on the cloth and watches the seed cascade down as she holds a baby or a doll in her lap. One white bag stands upright behind the woman holding the sieve, while a second bag has been depleted. A brass-colored tea kettle sits between the bags with a vessel, possibly ceramic. Vivid red flowers in that area could be a patch of poppies in the field. A woman behind this group, to our right, wraps a big bundle of stalks in a blue sack while another woman, to our left, carries a bundle of the rapeseed stalks balanced on her head with both hands. A group of men beyond her work in a circle, holding long scythes with straight blades overhead. Another woman kneels with her back to us and others work, hunched over, around the men. The field is enclosed by band of pine-green trees surrounding houses and barns. Gray clouds cover much of the pale blue sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in dark paint in the lower left corner: “Jules Breton Courrieres 1860.”

Jules Breton

The Colza (Harvesting Rapeseed), 1860

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 93.98 × 137.16 cm (37 × 54 in.)

framed: 128.27 × 172.72 × 17.15 cm (50 1/2 × 68 × 6 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection)

Accession Number

2014.136.21

Artists / Makers

Jules Breton (painter) French, 1827 - 1906

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower left: Jules Breton / Courrieres 1860

Provenance

Purchased June 1861 by Anna Delion, Paris; (her sale, Paris, 19-26 March 1862, no. 351, as La Récolte du colza). C.G. Candano, by June 1887.[1] sold 1899 to William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York; bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

[1] Early provenance according to La Vie Moderne: Nineteenth-Century French Art from the Corcoran Gallery, Exh. cat., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1983: 41-42.

Associated Names

Candano, C.G.
Clark, William Andrews
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Delion, Anna

Exhibition History

1860: Exposition Générale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1860, no. 90.

1861: Salon, Paris, 1861, no. 427.

1982: Jules Breton and the French Rural Tradition, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis; Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, 1982-1983, no. 13, as The Rapeseed Harvest (Le Colza or Le Moisson de Colza).

1983: La Vie Moderne: Nineteenth Century French Art from the Corcoran Gallery, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Columbus Museum of Arts and Sciences, Georgia; Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Northwestern University, Evanston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tampa Museum; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Akron Art Museum, 1983-1985, no. 12, repro.

1989: The William A. Clark Collection: Treasures of a Copper King, Yellowstone Art Center, Billings; Montana Historical Society, Helena, 1989, unnumbered checklist.

2001: Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001-2002, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2006: Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat, Dallas Museum of Art, 22 October 2006-7 January 2007, no. 6, repro.

Bibliography

2002: Lacouture, Annette Bourrut. Jules Breton: Painter of Peasant Life. Exh. cat. Musée des beaux-arts, Arras; Musée des beaux-arts, Quimper; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. New Haven and London, 2002: 88 fig. 44, 89.