I have always had a passion for the beautiful. If the man in me is often a pessimist, the artist, on the contrary, is pre-eminently an optimist.
—Jules Breton (1827-1906)
Just a short one today. I’ve used the quote above from artist Jules Breton once before here but it was with another of his paintings. The piece above of his, Le Soir (The Evening), is in the permanent collection of our local art museum, the Arnot Art Museum. It was an important painting for me, really one of the first real pieces of art with which I interacted as a kid.
In junior high school, I would sometimes ride home after school with my father. The junior high I attended was just down the street from the Sheriff’s Department where he worked and the museum was just one block over from that. So, between the end of the school day and my dad’s shift, I had an hour or two to explore a little, trying to stay out of trouble as best I could. Not always successful on that front but I won’t go into that part of the story right now.
Most days I found myself at the Steele Memorial Library which was at that time housed in a beautiful old Carnegie-endowed building. It had such warmth and was a great place to spend several hours at a time searching the stacks. Some days, however, I found myself at the Arnot Art Museum which was not yet expanded. It’s collection wasn’t large but it was quite good, with plenty of classic European paintings from well known artists of the mid and late 19th century. It was the type of work that a wealthy collector of that time would acquire on his yearly sojourn to the continent.
This piece from Jules Breton then dominated the front parlor of the museum, as it still does today. I knew nothing of art then, had only been in one museum at that point. Well, two if you count the Baseball Hall of Fame. But even with that lack of knowledge, this painting spoke volumes to me. The glow of that sun going down behind that far horizon. The tired laborers getting ready to head home from a long day in the fields. The gorgeous blend of colors that made up that sky.
And the sense of space. It was simple and elegant. Quiet but forceful.
It was the first painting that spoke to me, the first that offered me possibilities beyond my own meager knowledge and limited opportunities. It made me think. And feel.
It remains an important piece for me. So, to see the words of Breton and whole-heartedly agree with them as an artist feels almost like coming full circle back to this painting and the small spark it kindled in me as a kid. It took a while for the spark to grow but it was always there after that.
Okay, that’s enough for today. Maybe too much.
Have a good day.
Redtree Times 
It’s strange, how artworks impress themselves on us. And there’s something else: in a time when everything is ‘awesome,’ ‘terrific,’ ‘stunning,’ and ‘unbelievable,’ I always pay attention to works that render me speechless. Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 did that for me in high school, and more recently Mary Cassatt’s Child in a Straw Hat stopped me cold in a museum. I didn’t want to stop looking at it.
We respond positively to some work for obvious reasons. But in my opinion it’s the work that leaves us grasping for meaning, speechless as you say, that has the greatest impact. Maybe it’s the mystery seeing something that triggers a strong response without knowing why. It’s the elusive object that every artist seeks and seldom finds.