The Song of the Lark (Jules Breton)

The Song of the Lark is an 1884 oil on canvas painting by French naturalist artist Jules Breton.

Description
The painting shows a peasant farm girl walking in a field transfixed, listening to birdsong at dawn. It was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1885. Since 1894, it has been part of the Henry Field Memorial Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.

In popular culture
At the Century of Progress, the 1934 Chicago World's Fair, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt unveiled The Song of the Lark as the winner of the Chicago Daily News contest to find the "most beloved work of art in America". She also declared it her personal favorite painting, saying "At this moment The Song of the Lark had come to represent the popular American artistic taste on a national level."

Willa Cather's 1915 novel The Song of the Lark takes its name from the painting, which is also used as the novel's cover art.

In Thomas Wolfe's 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel, the protagonist Eugene Gant wins a prize for writing an essay on the painting.

In February 2014, actor Bill Murray said at a press event for the film, The Monuments Men, that a chance encounter with The Song of the Lark at the Art Institute of Chicago helped him in his early career when he was contemplating suicide.