Initially a portrait and history painter, he co-founded the Barbizon School in the late 1840s, turning to evocative scenes of poor country people.
Millet
His last great painting of crowds at a religious ceremony, and his first significant self-portrait. The final years of the eternally golden harvest.
Under pressure from his dealers, Breton concentrated on single figures in the countryside, typically at dawn or dusk. These have become some of his most popular paintings.
Dividing his time between his home in Courrières and Brittany, he broadened his range of subjects and views – with mounting success.
This period saw him concentrate on farmworkers toiling in the fields at dusk, and he discovered the coast and people of Brittany.
Is it really futile and impossible to try to paint the wind? Here’s a selection of evidence, drawn from landscapes and marines.
An independent pioneer of ‘social realism’, his densely-populated landscapes showed real people struggling to live in the north French countryside.
How many in the White House know the story of the memorial fountain just opposite – of Butt and Millet, Tennyson, and Oenone?
Gardens aren’t just for flowers, and paintings of vegetable gardens can be just as good art as the most resplendent roses.
Brother of the architect Richard Morris Hunt, he painted portraits of the ‘Boston Brahmins’, then landscapes in Barbizon style.
