The Two Pictures I Would Like Best To Own Series–Part 5

Hello, again History Lovers,

Today a farmwife from Kansas shares her two “best-loved” paintings. While in high school, she spotted the first painting through the window of a furniture store on her way to school. Thirty years later she finally acquired a print and is preparing to have it framed to hang in her home. Her second choice is as humble and as lovely.

Enjoy!

Our Best Loves

Well do I remember my childhood days and perhaps that is why I hunger for some of the best things in life and appreciate them more. We were poor and had plenty of privations and real art was not thought of so there were no pictures in our home. How well I remember one winter morning on my way to high school, passing a large furniture store in Kansas City and seeing a copy of The Angelus by Millet in the window. Instantly I fell in love with that picture and it fascinates me as much now as it did thirty years ago. As I gazed upon it, I could almost hear the bells ring. I could not analyze the picture then but now I know that the artist knew and loved the peasants he portrayed and admired their spirit of reverence and thanksgiving, their patient performance of wearisome labor, the beauty of character in people of lowly station, and the power and influence of custom and high ideals. I have The Gleaners by the same artist but I was not satisfied until I owned a copy of The Angelus which is waiting to be framed.

Another picture that gives me a thrill of delight is Song of the Lark by Breton. It makes prominent the simple beauty of youth and health, and labor dignified by the ennobling qualities of character and that there is something beautiful to be found wherever we are if we can only see or hear it and that ability, like happiness, comes from within us.

What great satisfaction and ennobling power in our lives are our “best loves” whether they be for pictures, song, instrumental music, poem, or prose. –Mrs. J. F. M., Kan.

The above article was originally published in The Farmer’s Wife–A Magazine For Farm Women, March 1923, Page 359; Webb Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota. Articles may be edited for length and clarity.