Jules Breton

As the self-proclaimed "peasant who paints peasants," Breton achieved fame early in his career with expansive works revealing the life of rural workers such as his 1861 Salon entry The Rape Seed Harvest (The Corcoran Gallery of Art, William A. Clark Collection, Washington, D.C.). Though critics appreciated the work's naturalism and well-observed detail, some felt that Breton over-populated it with those engaged in the activity of beating the rape seed plants, bundling stalks into stooks, or gathering seeds.  Others, like Théophile Gautier, turned their attention immediately to the central figure of the sifter, explaining: "seeing the noble pose in which she carries out her labor, would one not think of an Elysian virgin holding the mystic sieve?" (Abécédaire du Salon de 1861, Paris, 1861, pp. 85-86 as quoted in Annette Bourrut Lacouture, Jules Breton, Painter of Peasant Life, exh. cat., New Haven, 2002, p. 89). So appealing was this woman that over twenty years later, the renowned American dealer Samuel P. Avery commissioned Breton (via his Paris agent George Lucas) to replicate her form as a singular Peasant Woman Sifting Rapeseed. Avery was a strong proponent of Breton's reputation in the United States, and correspondence between the artist and dealer suggests their mutual relationship (Bourrut Lacouture, p. 195).  While Breton was typically allowed to choose his own subjects and compositional arrangements, he followed Avery’s suggestions; in this case, the dealer's interests and artist's inspiration coincided.  In the 1870s and early 1880s Breton began to focus on a group of works depicting single field workers set in monumental poses. 

As with the present work, the artist often built upon reworked elements of earlier, larger compositions. Yet here the central, stoic sifter is portrayed in a vertical format, isolated, performing her task alone save for trio of men in the far background. The large sieve, nearly half the size of her body, rests against her waist, extending out from the picture space.  Despite what must be a hefty load, the sifter’s expression is serene, as a cascade of dark rapeseeds rains, almost effortlessly, from her tool to the tarp below, next to two large bags already filled.  Breton accurately describes the harvesting process. The plant is ready for picking only when the pods and stalks are yellow and the seeds become dark and rattle within their pods.  The pods are best separated from the stalks by vigorously beating them; the mangled vegetation is then sifted from the small seeds.  In its numerous steps, gathering sacks of seeds was notoriously labor intensive, yet none of this is revealed in Breton’s sifter’s stance or expression. In her solemnity, the sifter becomes an icon of rural labor, her powerful strength and important work never ceasing.  This sense of an epic, yet sensitive, connection to the land is further enforced as the sifter is placed against a field of long furrowed rows, the deep lines disappearing near the horizon dotted by the landmarks of a small village.  Despite Breton’s attempts to elevate this figure beyond the trials of her labor, there is an ironic twist: the oil pressed from rapeseeds was a highly desirable industrial lubricant for combustible engines and lamplight, and its great demand would eventually inspire the advent of the mechanized combine making her role nearly obsolete.  Yet overall Peasant Woman Sifting Rapeseed is a perfect encapsulation of Breton’s unique, iconic vision.  As Marius Vachon wrote "M. Jules Breton paints peasants who, although a little idealized, are none the less living men of the fields and very true to life. He paints them differently, from a different point of view" (La France, June 17, 1877 as quoted in Bourrut Lacouture, p. 206).