By : Jules Breton

 from Courrières  France (1827 - 1906)

Oil on canvas; 71.4 x 127.6 cm; 28 1/8 x 50 1/4 in -© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkBequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900http://www.metmuseum.org/https://www.facebook.com/metmuseumThe weeders (1868)

"This is a smaller variant of a composition Breton painted in 1860 (Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha) and exhibited to wide acclaim at the Salon of 1861 and the World’s Fair of 1867 in Paris. In his autobiography, Breton described this twilight scene of peasants pulling up thistles and weeds—"their faces haloed by the pink transparency of their violet hoods, as if to venerate a fecundating star"—noting that he had discovered the subject as a "finished picture" near his native village, Courrières, in northern France."

http://www.metmuseum.org/

Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton as a 19th-century French Realist 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.Read more at: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Breton