The Tired Gleaner (1880): Art, History and Details

The Tired Gleaner (1880) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jules Breton (French, 1827–1906).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Gleaning—or picking up what little grain remains after a wheat field has been harvested—was usually the job of the poor, especially women and children. Breton shows a single gleaner stretching against a backdrop of the setting sun, while behind her others still labor in the field. Her bare feet and worn, simple clothing immediately identify her as a peasant. At the same time, however, her expansive gesture and the subdued tones of her skin and clothes link her to the surrounding landscape, both visually and symbolically. This painting not only suggests the hardships of peasant life, but also the grand link between humanity and the land. Like many of his successful contemporaries, Breton met demand for his paintings by copying and making variations of his own works. This picture is similar to a larger, more famous painting that was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1880. The Cleveland collector Hinman H. Hurlbut, who bought this canvas from the artist, probably commissioned Breton to make this smaller variation of the larger painting.

Object facts

• Title: The Tired Gleaner
• Date: 1880
• Creator attribution: Jules Breton (French, 1827–1906)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Unframed: 94 x 63.8 cm (37 x 25 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1915.721

A detail from the museum

Breton felt a sense of connection with peasant life, growing up in a small village of rural workers; however, his father's standing as a property manager to a duke allowed Breton to receive a classical arts education.

Collection credit

Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Alan Chong. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art : A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.
• Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.
• Bourrut Lacouture, Annette. Jules Breton: Catalogue Raisonné: Peintures. Paris: Éditions du Sandre, 2025.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.