| The Song of the Lark | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Jules Breton |
| Year | 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 |
| Accession | 1894.1033 |
| Website | www |
The Song of the Lark is an 1884 oil on canvas painting by French naturalist artist Jules Breton. It is part of the Henry Field Memorial Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. [1]
The painting shows a peasant farm girl walking in a field transfixed, listening to birdsong at dawn.
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 declared it her personal favorite painting, [2] saying "At this moment The Song of the Lark had come to represent the popular American artistic taste on a national level." [3]
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 February 2014, actor Bill Murray said at a press event for the film, The Monuments Men , that a chance encounter with The Song of the Lark at the Art Institute of Chicago helped him in his early career when he was contemplating suicide. [4]
The World's Columbian Exposition was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, held in Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago had won the right to host the fair over several other cities, including New York City, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis. The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American architecture, the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image.
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American Gothic is a 1930 painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood was inspired to paint what is now known as the American Gothic House in Eldon, Iowa, along with "the kind of people [he] fancied should live in that house". It depicts a farmer standing beside his daughter – often mistakenly assumed to be his wife. The painting's name is a word play on the house's architectural style, Carpenter Gothic.
Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton was a 19th-century French naturalist painter. His paintings are heavily influenced by the French countryside and his absorption of traditional methods of painting helped make Jules Breton one of the primary transmitters of the beauty and idyllic vision of rural existence.
The Song of the Lark is a novel by American author Willa Cather, written in 1915. It is her third novel to be published.
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The Song of the Lark may refer to: