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French Realist, Academic painter. He had a respect for tradition, a love of the land and for his native region which remained central to his art throughout his life and provided many scenes for his Salon compositions. His interest in peasant imagery was well-established around 1853 and what he is best known for today. In 1854, he returned to the village of Courrières where he settled. He visited Brittany several times, believing he had Breton ancestry. He continued to exhibit throughout the 1870s and into the 1880s and 1890s and his reputation grew. His renderings of single peasant female figures in a landscape, posed against the setting sun, remained very popular, especially in the United States. He was one of the best known painters of his period in his native France as well as England and the United States. In 1880 Vincent van Gogh walked 85 miles to Courrières to pay a visit to Breton, whom he greatly admired, but turned back, put off by Breton's high wall.
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