|
|
The Blessed Bread
By Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929)
In the Luxembourg, Paris
Dagnan-Bouveret was a pupil of Gerome, the famous French historical genre painter, who was professor of painting in the School of Fine Arts. He achieved his first success in the Salon of 1879 with "A Wedding at the Photographer's." In 1886, in the same exhibition, he was represented for the picture now under review, which gained considerable attention as a study of light in an interior, quite apart from the general treatment of the subject. There is a touch of homely sentimentality about the devout old women, whose faces are contrasted with those of the acolyte and the little girl in the back row. The atmosphere of the village church is strikingly conveyed by the painter, whose simple rendering of the familiar ceremonial is characteristic of his work.
With such unpretentious yet human subjects, the artist has built up a considerable reputation in European art circles. No one is happier than he in revealing the finer and more tender graces of humanity as they display themselves in the everyday life of his countrymen, and perhaps because they strike familiar chords in the heart, his pictures appeal as strongly to the domestic and devotional strain in the peoples of other nations as in his own. The peace that he loves to depict finds expression in delicate colouring which harmonises well with the subjects he chooses. Pictured incidents like "Bretonnes au Pardon" or "The Nuptial Benediction" show the same liking for devotional spirit so well. After the harsh realism of so many modern artists, who see in life only the bizarre, the quiet truthfulness, no less real, which is depicted by this painter, comes with a sense of relief, like the chime of a vesper bell heard in the gloaming after the glare of a blazing day.
From the book "Famous Paintings" printed in 1913.
Large files of this public domain print are available at Stock Photos at Songs of Praise
(Firefox users must click again on the large photo to see the very large image.)
Online "Name the Painting"
Paintings by Dagnan-Bouveret
Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret
at Art Net
Bretonnes au Pardon
(Breton Women at a Pardon) painted in 1887
Famous Paintings in this Series
M. Bompard
A Prayer to the Madonna
Botticelli
The Madonna and Child
Sir Edward Coley
Burne-Jones
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
Sir Edward Coley
Burne-Jones
The Mill
Jean Charles Cazin
Ishmael
John Constable
Boat-Building Near
Flatford Mill
John Crome
On the Skirts of the Forest
Pascal Adolphe Jean
Dagnan-Bouveret
The Blessed Bread
Theophile Emanuel Duverger
Alone
C.W. Furse
Diana of the Uplands
W.H. Gore
"'Listed"
Peter Graham
A Rainy Day
Jean Baptiste Greuze
The Listening Girl
Sir James Guthrie
A Highland Funeral
Frans Hals
A Man With a Glove
In His Hand
Hans Holbein the Younger
The Ambassadors
Henry Holiday
Dante and Beatrice
Sir Edwin Landseer
Suspense
Sir Edwin Landseer
A Naughty Child
H.H. La Thangue
Mowing Bracken
Sir Thomas Lawrence
Caroline of Brunswick,
Queen of George IV.
G.D. Leslie
Sun and Moon Flowers
J. Seymour Lucas
Flirtation
Jean Louis Ernest
Meissonier
The Print Collector
Jean Francois Millet
The Angelus
Jean Francois Millet
Going to Work
Sir William Quiller
Orchardson
The Farmer's Daughter
Ralph Peacock
Ethel
Rembrandt
His Own Portrait
Sir Joshua Reynolds
The Infant Samuel
Sir Joshua Reynolds
The Strawberry Girl
George Romney
The Parson's Daughter
W. Dendy Sadler
A Good Story
W. Dendy Sadler
Friday
William Small
The Last Match
J.M. Swan
On the Alert,
Lioness and Cubs
J.M.W. Turner
Peace: Burial at Sea of the
Body of Sir David Wilkie
J.M.W. Turner
Rain Steam and Speed
The Great Western Railway
Velazquez
Portrait of a Spanish Lady
"La Femme a L'Eventail"
Frederick Walker
The Vagrants
George Frederick Watts
Hope
James McNeill Whistler
My Mother
Anders Zorn
A Fisherman
Index Page
Famous Paintings
