Jules Breton’s “Song of the Lark” was deemed the most popular painting in America in a poll conducted in 1934. A young peasant woman stands silently in the flat fields of the artist’s native Normandy as the sun rises, listening to the song of a distant lark. It currently hangs in the Art Institute in Chicago, one of my favorite museums.

The painting was Eleanor Roosevelt’s favorite work of art; it also inspired Bill Murray to try again while he was struggling actor in Chicago.