Jules Breton, whose paintings Vincent had admired since his youth, lived in Courrières, one hundred and seventy kilometers from Petit Vame. Vincent bought a ticket with all his money, and when the ticket was spent, he walked for five days, sleeping in haystacks and exchanging bread for his drawings. When Vincent found himself among the green gardens of Courrières and saw Breton’s new, magnificent studio, just built of red brick, all his courage instantly disappeared. He wandered around the city for two days, but was unable to overcome his timidity in front of the austere, seemingly impregnable studio. Exhausted, brutally hungry, without a centime in his pocket, in Pietersen’s shoes, the soles of which had become dangerously thin, he walked the one hundred and seventy kilometers to Borinage.

Who was this Breton, whom Van Gogh had so revered in his time? Jules Adolphe Aymé Louis Breton (1827-1906) enjoyed great popularity during his lifetime, and not only the piety shown to him by an unknown young Dutchman is evidence of this. One of Breton’s paintings set a record in 1886, becoming the most expensive canvas by a living artist sold at auction (for 45 thousand dollars, or about 230 thousand francs, about 1.4 million dollars now) (according to another version – the second most expensive). The following year, this record was broken by the work of the then extremely popular Meissonier. During Breton’s life, his paintings were often reproduced.

Currently, Meissonier has 26 articles on Wikipedia, Breton – 23, which is much less than the number of articles about Van Gogh (193). The painting “For the First Communion”, which was discussed above, was sold in 2016 for 1.27 million dollars, i.e. its price has hardly changed in 130 years, taking inflation into account. There is no need to say how many times the price of Van Gogh’s works has increased. Sic transit!

Jules Breton painted mainly pictures on peasant themes.

He is more sugary than his older contemporaries Courbet or Millet, who also worked (including) in this field, and he reminds me more of Bastien-Lepage, who was much younger. Of course, he is a salon artist, like almost all “normal” artists of his time. Breton was a talented and skillful painter, but looking at several dozen of his pictures with pretty peasant girls is somewhat tiring, you begin to understand why art lovers finally wanted something different.

Breton did not try to fence himself off from new trends at all; impressionistic techniques can be seen in his later works. However, in studies and sketches “impressionism” is visible earlier, which is not surprising: the essence of impressionism is the study raised to a principle.