The Song of the Lark (Jules Breton)

The Song of the Lark is an 1884 oil on canvas painting by French naturalist artist Jules Breton.

The Song of the Lark
Artist	Jules Breton
Year	1884 (1884)
Medium	Oil on canvas
Subject	Farming, sun
Dimensions	110.6 cm × 85.8 cm (43.5 in × 33.75 in)
Location	Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Accession	1894.1033
Website	www.artic.edu/artworks/94841/the-song-of-the-lark

Description and history

The painting shows a peasant farm girl walking in a field transfixed, listening to birdsong at dawn. It was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1885. Since 1894, it has been part of the Henry Field Memorial Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago,^[1] a collection of oil paintings that had been owned by the late Henry Field. In 1893, Field's widow, Florence, had established a trust for the purposes of loaning this collection of 44 oil paintings to the museum. On May 26, 1916, she outright gifted the entire collection to the museum.^[2]

In popular culture

At the Century of Progress, the 1934 Chicago World's Fair, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt unveiled The Song of the Lark as the winner of the Chicago Daily News contest to find the "most beloved work of art in America". She also declared it her personal favorite painting,^[3] saying "At this moment The Song of the Lark had come to represent the popular American artistic taste on a national level."^[4]

Willa Cather's 1915 novel The Song of the Lark takes its name from the painting, which is also used as the novel's cover art.

In Thomas Wolfe's 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel, the protagonist Eugene Gant wins a prize for writing an essay on the painting.

In February 2014, actor Bill Murray said at a press event for the film, The Monuments Men, that a chance encounter early in his career with The Song of the Lark at the Art Institute of Chicago dissuaded him from committing suicide.^[5][6]