Jules Breton

The Artist’s Studio; sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, June 2-3, 1911, no. 2

M. Knoedler & Co., Paris and New York (purchased at the above sale for 18,000 francs)

Anon. Sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, October 20, 1954

Mrs. E.S. Webster, Jr. (purchased at the above sale)

Katherine Deere Butterworth, Moline, Illinois

Lanier; sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, April 7, 1966

(purchased by H.P. Kraus at the above sale for $1,200)

Fine Arts Journal, December 1913, p. 717, illustrated

Hollister Sturges, Jules Breton and the French Rural Tradition, exhibition catalogue, Omaha, 1982, p. 133

L’Amour depicts two young workers pausing for a moment together after a long day’s work in the fields. It is the end of their day, the moon is in the sky and it will soon be dark. Jules Breton not only captured this moment in oil, but also in a sonnet he dedicated to the Mistral:

S’ils ont passé, muets, la fille et le garcon,

Sur ce chemin, croisant et melant leur haleine,

Pour leur coeur qui bondit sous le tricot de laine,

Ciel et terre, alentour, tout n’est plus que frisson;

A leur amour tout vibre: herbe, fleur et buisson.

L’Occident flambe au feu don’t leur ardeur est pleine;

La prière palpite et tremble avec la plaine:

La nuit vient, l’Angelus tressaille à l’unisson.

Le soir vermeil émeut les planètes, don’t l’une

Eclate en sa pâleur de fantôme…La lune,

Par dela la barrière, en éveil sur les prés,

Pauvre morte glacée à la face hagarde,

Dans l’azur exaltant nos amants empourprés,

Agrandie en son disque étrange…, les regarde.

If they passed, silently, the girl and boy,

On this path, uniting one breath,

It was for their hearts, leaping under knitted sweaters,

That sky and earth, and all vicinity, were reduced to shuddering.

All thrills to their love: buds, flowers, bush.

The West burns with the fire of which their ardor is full;

Prayers palpitate and tremble with the plain:

Night falls, the Angelus quivers in single voice.

The vermilion night is riotous with planets, of which

One shines through in its phantom pallor...the moon,

Behind the fence, watching over the fields,

Poor icy death with a haggard visage

From the sky exalts our crimson lovers,

And magnified within its odd disk...watches them.