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 simple happiness of a farmer 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 is the sixth of eight children. It was his father who first introduced him to drawing, then he took lessons with Louis-Gabriel Charrioux, a teacher from Brest, before moving to Paris and the teaching of Jean-Victor Bertin. It was the death of his father in 1835 that made him return 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 Lorient bookseller, who became his wife in 1837, and who gave 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 a first commission from the latter and a recommendation to teach drawing at the prestigious Henri IV high school. from Paris, where he settled in 1845. From 1840, he exhibited in almost all Parisian salons and continued to participate in them until 1879. During school holidays, he traveled to Brittany (Auray and Hennebont region of his in-laws as well as the port towns of Finistère) and in Normandy to paint landscapes and seascapes. His fame continues 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, on the death of his mother, that he signed by making an upside-down "N", as she did on these paintings. In 1874 his second daughter married the painter Gaston Roullet. Following health and financial problems, in 1877 he decided to join his eldest daughter in Algiers, where he died in 1881. From sketches taken from life, Jules Noël recomposed very lively paintings in his workshop, mixing thus his love of landscape, to genre scenes accumulating many details. This work of recomposition in the workshop often leads him to transform 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.