Last Flowers (Dernières Fleurs) by Jules Breton, oil on canvas 1890. Collections of Cincinnati Art M

Last Flowers (Dernières Fleurs) by Jules Breton, oil on canvas 1890. Collections of Cincinnati Art Museum.In The Life of an Artist, his autobiography published the same year as the date of this painting, Breton reminisced rapturously about the beauty of his childhood winters in northernmost France:“Ah! what delight when the first snowflakes eddy through air, like a cloud of white butterflies, and fall with velvety softness upon the ground, which is gradually covered with their cold and immaculate splendor! How our cries of joy re-echoed sonorously in this vibrant silence! What an awakening for the morrow! The rosy sunlight falls slantingly on the white roofs. The sky, of an extraordinary purity, casts a blue shadow on the smooth white carpet of snow in the courtyard. Among the branches of the cherry tree, capricious rays of light play in rosy hues among the myriad sparkles of the iridescent hoarfrost!“[…] I think all the world ought to rejoice as I do, and I am very much surprised to hear my grandmother say, ‘The snow has come. The poor are going to suffer now!’“For us, who thought only of our sports, the snow meant skating on the pond, joyous combats with snowballs, and bombardings of the pigeon-house, with occasional interruptions caused by the numbness and stiffness of our fingers from the cold, followed by sharp pain when we warm them at the fire.”After a while, perhaps with his grandmother’s reminder hovering at the back of his mind, he notices winter’s effect on the garden blooms that had still been standing, “its dahlias and chrysanthemums, their leaves hanging sadly in blackened, shriveled shreds. How those plants must have suffered!” -- source link

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