The work of Jules Breton (1827-1906) may be out of fashion, but it's time to take a fresh look at the painter of peasant life, writes Aidan Dunne
Time has not been kind to the French painter Jules Breton (1827-1906). Celebrated during his lifetime for his beautifully wrought depictions of peasant life and custom, in his latter years he saw the beginnings of the process by which his status and achievements were eclipsed by Impressionism and other innovative artistic movements. Although widely collected and internationally influential, his work came to be seen as retrograde and sentimental.
He was relegated to the sidelines and, with the accelerating pace of artistic change in the 20th century, all but forgotten. He hasn't fared much better at the hands of some more recent, revisionist art historians. The tendency has been to criticise him for the hallowed stoicism of his peasants, who dutifully bend the knee to the institutions of state and church and accept their lot in the rigid hierarchy of class structure.
Given all that, he might seem like an odd subject for a major exhibition, but the National Gallery's Jules Breton: Painter of Peasant Life actually fits into the context of a wider re-evaluation of 19th century European art and, especially, a reappraisal of the French Salon painters. They, including Breton, were decisively supplanted by the appeal of the Impressionists throughout the 20th century - the appeal that extends to the present day, as the relative popularity of Impressionist exhibitions confirms.
Breton always had his admirers, however, not least in the US and among collectors and regional museums in France. And the impetus for this handsome exhibition, which has been a long time in the making, comes from some of these sources. The Irish connection is the presence of one of Breton's showpiece compositions, The Gleaners, which is in the National Gallery's collection.
Breton was born and spent most of his life in the village of Courrieres in the north-west corner of France, close to the Belgian border. The flat, agricultural landscape around the village and the people who worked it came to hold an enduring fascination for him, to the extent that, as Annette Bourrut Lacouture recounts (in her extremely sympathetic text on the artist), he continued to depict traditional agricultural labour and customs, conducted in an idyllic rural setting, even as the landscape changed irrevocably around him. From the 1850s, the exploitation of a major coal seam led the establishment of mine after mine and the irruption of slag heaps and other signs of industrialisation across his beloved plain.
So, there was a nostalgic quality to Breton's depictions of peasant life even at the time. His other main sphere of inspiration was Brittany, with which he felt such a strong affinity that he suspected - perhaps reasonably given his surname - he must have Breton ancestry. He was drawn to the landscape, the traditional costumes and the religious rituals, in particular the local pardons, the processional pilgrimages attended by much pomp and ceremony.
While Breton was "profoundly religious", Couture observes, he did not really practise his faith.
There is an air of sanctimonious devotion to his exhaustive depictions of Breton religious ritual. In Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History, David L. Phillips contrasts, rather unfairly, Breton's depiction of the peasants as "a faceless herd" with a painting that Breton disliked intensely, Courbet's epic, almost anarchic treatment of A Burial at Ornans, in which, though they are united in ritual, virtually every character has a sense of individual life and concerns. The problem with Breton's peasants is not that they are "a faceless herd", for they are not, but the incredible sense of pious unanimity in his treatment of them gives his religious paintings the appearance of fundamentalist religious propaganda.
Yet the excessive sanctity evident in every aspect of his religious compositions suggests an intense yearning for the absolute, the ideal, that is very much part of his character and personality. It is probably related to the way his young peasant women are extraordinarily idealised figures, strong but passive goddesses. Ingres and Poussin are there in the background, but Breton does come up with versions of statuesque, monumental figures that are really very good.
It is noticeable that he focuses on young women. Even in group compositions, one (or other) woman will have a certain additional poise and presence that sets her apart. In fact, Lacouture points out that this device became a hallmark of his style: the serene, timeless, classical female figure set almost incongruously against the naturalistic hurly-burly of peasant life.
Arguably, Breton's technical virtues, his meticulous draughtsmanship and precisely detailed, descriptive painting, were devalued by developments in 20th century art. But it is certainly possible to look at them now with renewed enjoyment, and free of the baggage of such prejudice. As to the accusations of sentimentality: he is not generally a sentimental painter. Certainly he idealises his subject matter in a way that might seem reactionary but, as Couture's text suggests, he was motivated not by political or moral conservatism as such, but by qualities that went to the very heart of his personal history and character.
In fact, the role of his personal history in the development of his art is fascinating and open to elaboration.
If his work still comes across as arch and theatrical, it is also possible to see beyond those aspects, to Breton as a gifted painter of celebratory, monumental female figures, as someone genuinely engaged by our bonds with the earth, as a fine painter of landscape. Most of all, though, the show features some terrific, memorable paintings.
Jules Breton: Painter of Peasant Life is at the National Gallery Millennium Wing until December 15th