Breton Brother and Sister

Bouguereau finished this in 1871, a year when France was reeling. It had just lost a war to Prussia and then torn itself apart in the Paris Commune, with Paris under fire that spring. None of that shows here. He had spent summers sketching in Brittany, the country's conservative western corner, and worked those studies into a quiet scene: a small boy in Breton dress leaning against his older sister, both barefoot and calm. Images like this, of virtuous peasant life close to the land, sold fast to wealthy American buyers. This one went to Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, a major early patron of the Metropolitan Museum, who left it to the collection in 1887.