Virginie Demont-Breton
Virginie Élodie Marie Thérèse Demont-Breton (26 July 1859, Courrières – 10 January 1935, Paris) was a French painter.
Also recorded as Virginie-Elodie Demont-Breton · Virginie Elodie Demont-Breton · Virginie Elodie Breton · Virginie Elodie Demont Breton
Virginie Demont-Breton

Charles-Louis Michelez · Album artistique et biographique, Salon de 1883, vol. 1, p. 8 · Public domain
- Full name
- Virginie Élodie Marie Thérèse Breton.
- Born
- 1859. · Courrières.
- Died
- 1935. · Paris.
- Nationality
- France.
- Occupation
- painter and writer.
- Fields
- painting and literature.
- Movements
- Naturalism, French Realism and Wissant school.
- Teachers
- Jules Breton.
- Known for
- La Plage.
- Honours
- Knight of the Legion of Honour, Officer of the Legion of Honour, Officer of the order of Nichan Iftikhar, Officer of the Order of Leopold, Officer of the Order of the Crown and Montyon Prize.
- Languages
- French.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
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Documentary summary
Virginie Élodie Marie Thérèse Demont-Breton (26 July 1859, Courrières – 10 January 1935, Paris) was a French painter.
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wikipedia incomplete · checked 25 September 2026
- Identity
- resolved
- Independent source families
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- Admitted assertions
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- 0
Authority files
wikidata · Q3560732 · wikipedia · Virginie Demont-Breton
In this article
Biography
Biography
Training under Jules Breton is recorded. The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is painting and literature. Jules Breton is recorded as an influence. Positions recorded include president. Works named in the authority record are La Plage. Work by Virginie Demont-Breton is recorded in the collections of Design Museum Gent, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK), Musée d'Orsay and Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris. Distinctions recorded are Knight of the Legion of Honour, Officer of the Legion of Honour, Officer of the order of Nichan Iftikhar and Officer of the Order of Leopold.
Virginie was the daughter of Jules Breton (1827–1906) and the niece of Émile Breton, both renowned painters. Her mother, Élodie de Vigne, a painter and model, was herself the daughter of the Flemish painter and medievalist Félix de Vigne. Through her father she was introduced to other painters, the most influential being Rosa Bonheur who became a role-model and mentor to Virginie. She married the painter Adrien Demont in 1880. Her artistic career got off to an early start due to her having family ties with painters, and she finished her first painting at the young age of fourteen. By the age of twenty, she was exhibiting at the Salon where she received an Honorable Mentions and, four years later, she won a gold medal at the Amsterdam Exposition. In 1890, she and her husband moved to Wissant, a small village on the Côte d'Opale, where they built a villa designed by the Belgian architect Edmond De Vigne. Called the "Typhonium", it is in Neo-Egyptian style and has been a Historical Monument since 1985. Demont-Breton exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts, the Children's Building, and The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. She served as President of the Union of Women Painters and Sculptors from 1895 to 1901, though she resigned for a short period of time in 1892, due to a disagreement between her and the Union's community over what she saw as their unfair methods of voting. She worked with Hélène Bertaux in her effort to open the École des Beaux-Arts to women students; a goal which was achieved in 1897. Thanks to her success in this endeavor, female artists were given the opportunity to not only be present in academic settings, but also the ability to use artistic tools previously not available to them, such as nude models. She was the second woman to be decorated with the Légion d'honneur – the first woman being her mentor Rosa Bonheur – in 1894, and became an Officer in 1914. The previous year, she had been elected to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp) in 1913 Originally, she painted portraits and historical scenes but, after moving to Wissant, switched to painting the fishermen and their families in a Realistic style. In 1889, Vincent van Gogh painted his own version of one of her works, L’Homme Est en Mer (Her Man is Out to Sea). She also painted scenes of motherhood and children that depict mothers in strong and powerful imagery within nature.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1859
Virginie Demont-Breton born at Courrières.
1935
Virginie Demont-Breton died at Paris.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Courrières.
Birth place
Paris.
Death place
Writings
Tendresses dans la tourmente. 1914-1919 poésies, Alphonse Lemerre, Paris 1920 Les maisons que j'ai connues. Plon-Nourrit, Paris 1926

Het water in! - Virginie Demont-Breton - Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen
Virginie Demont-Breton

Portrait de Virginie Demont-Breton par Pierre Petit - image utilisé pour la 2e collection de l'album Félix Potin
Nardac Gulliver
Primary material
Documents and archives
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q3560732: Virginie Demont-Breton
Unverified · Wikidata
reference work
- “Virginie Demont-Breton”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Gaze, Delia. "Dictionary of Women Artists: Artists, J-Z." Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers 1 (1997): 449.
- 2.Waller, Susan. "Fin de partie: A Group of Self-Portraits by Jean-Léon Gérôme." Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 9, no. 1 (2015): 297-308.
- 3.Base Mérimée PA00108453
- 4.Nichols, K. L. Women's Art at the World's Columbian Fair & Exposition, Chicago 1893.
- 5.Garb, Tamar. "Sisters of the Bush." Yale University Press, 1994, 14-18.
- 6.Radycki, Diane. "“Pictures of Flesh”: Modersohn-Becker and the Nude." Woman's Art Journal; Fall/Winter2009 30, no. 2 (2009): 3-14.
- 7.Dossier @ the Base Léonore.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 6
- Visages de Terre et de Mer - Regards de peintres à Wissant à la fin du 19è siècle, ouvrage collectif, Michèle Moyne-Charlet, Anne Esnault, Annette Bourrut Lacouture, Yann Gobert-Sergent, édition du Pas-de-Calais, SilvanaEditoriale, août 2014, 135 pages.
- Yann Gobert-Sergent, "Virginie Demont-Breton (1859-1935), Peintre et témoin de la vie des marins de la Côte d’Opale", in the Revue Boulogne et la Mer, #14, July 2008, pages 4–7.
- Annette Bourrut-Lacouture, "Virginie Demont-Breton (1859-1935) peintre de Wissant. La famille, la mer et les mythes fin de siècle", Bononia, #19, 1991, pages 36–45.
- Lee Bacon. A Painter of Motherhood. Virginie Demont-Breton. Chevalière de la Légion d'Honneur. The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine. Scribner & Company. 53. 210–215. 1897.
- Yann Gobert-Sergent, Les jeunes modèles de Virginie Demont-Breton, entre baignades et drames de la mer, Cahiers du Patrimoine Boulonnais, n° 84, décembre 2021.
- Yann Gobert-Sergent, Virginie Demont-Breton, peintre de la mer et adepte de la démesure architecturale, La Gazette du Patrimoine, p. 57, avril 2020.
References
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Died at
1- ParisPlace
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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