My avatar is a crop from Jules Breton’s The Song of the Lark. The painting is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Willa Cather used the title for her novel, The Song of the Lark. The novel’s protagonist, Thea Kronborg, is a ferociously ambitious small-town Colorado girl with a rare and magnificent gift. She sees the painting while studying in Chicago. Although novel barely mentions the painting, Cather by borrowing the title means us to see Thea in this work of art.
Why? For the same reasons that this work of art seems to sum up my own life. Columbia College (Chicago) has a wonderful commentary on the painting:
She’s not pretty; she’s a little bit mannish, actually— her feet are a little too large, her hands too strong on the handle of the scythe, her eyes too dark behind heavy brows. The empty field where she stands is harsh, with flat dirt extending for a long way before touching a green border far in the background. A mottled red sun rises behind her, heralding the dawn, but even that has little inherent beauty.
Yet the the look of searching wonder in her face is touching, even breathtaking. All the emotion of “The Song of the Lark” by Jules Breton is imbued with the implied things outside the canvas, lending the dull, mundane scene a romantic tinge.
…
We rarely see this kind of intimate scene in traditional art, and it offers a special kind of introspection. What does the song sound like? If a glimpse of simple pleasure like a birdsong can capture her attention so much, what is her life like? Without a word, the picture offers a look into one peasant girl’s life, immortalizing what would otherwise have been so easily lost.
…
Everyone sees something different in artwork, but in this case, it’s more than what you see— it’s everything that you don’t see. The beauty is in the hope in the girl’s expression, straining toward what’s just out of reach.
“The beauty is in the hope in the girl’s expression, straining toward what’s just out of reach.”
The YO Bar 