Return Of The Herd By Jules Noël - Brittany

Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1856 lower right.
Dimensions without frame 58 x 92 cm, with frame 75 x 105 cm.

Jules Noël takes us on a journey through this bucolic scene on a beautiful summer day where nothing disturbs the tranquility of a simple happiness of a peasant and his flock under the cover of century-old trees.

Jules Noël (1810-1881) was born to a Breton mother (Plougasnou) and a father from Meurthe-et-Moselle (Sornéville). Although born in Nancy, he spent a large part of his childhood in Finistère (Quimper then Lennon). He was the sixth of eight children. It was his father who first introduced him to drawing, then he took lessons with Louis-Gabriel Charrioux, a professor from Brest, before moving to Paris and the teaching of Jean-Victor Bertin. It was the death of his father in 1835 that brought him back to Brittany to teach drawing, first in Saint-Pol-de-Léon, then in Lorient. It was there that he met Adèle Cécile Constance Caris, daughter of a bookseller from Lorient, who became his wife in 1837 and bore him two daughters. It was from his brother-in-law Eugène Michaux, a naval lieutenant, that he drew his maritime knowledge. It was in Nantes that their first daughter was born and it was also in this city that he was introduced to the Duke of Nemours, which earned him his first commission from the latter and a recommendation to teach drawing at the prestigious Lycée Henri IV in Paris, where he settled in 1845. From 1840, he exhibited in almost all the Parisian salons and continued to participate until 1879. During school holidays, he traveled to Brittany (Auray and Hennebont, the region of his in-laws, as well as the port cities of Finistère) and Normandy to paint landscapes and seascapes. His fame continued to grow. In 1849, he received an encouragement prize, and he was asked by the Minister of the Interior for a copy of a painting in the Louvre. It was in 1867, upon the death of his mother, that he signed with an upside-down "N", as she did on these canvases. In 1874 his second daughter married the painter Gaston Roullet. Due to health and financial problems, in 1877 he decided to join his eldest daughter in Algiers, where he died in 1881. From sketches taken on the spot, Jules Noël recomposes very lively paintings in his studio, thus mixing his love of landscapes, with genre scenes accumulating many details. This work of recomposition in the studio often leads him to transform the places according to his mood of the moment. Jules Noël is present in many museums such as Quimper, Brest, Vannes, Lille, Versailles, but also London.