The same year that he failed for the second time in the competition for
the _Prix de Rome_, Bastien-Lepage painted _The Portrait of M. Wallon_,
which is one of his most important works as a portrait painter. In spite
of its tendency towards naturalism, this canvas was nevertheless still
conceived in accordance with the established technique, and the keen and
serious visage of the Father of the Constitution standing out against
its sombre background is a fine study in chiaroscuro.
But the following year he struck the naturalistic note more strongly in
his _Portrait of Lady L._, the only full-length, life-sized portrait
that he ever painted; and he declared himself plainly and definitely a
realist in his picture entitled _My Parents_. It would be impossible to
find two figures more life-like, more literal, or painted with greater
sincerity. This canvas amounted to a declaration of principles; for an
artist whom filial piety cannot turn aside from the truth will never
make sacrifices to convention: he will never consent to embellish or
idealize his models through tricks of his craft; he will paint them as
he sees them, without correcting any of the imperfections and ugliness
with which nature has afflicted them. How clearly we recognize that
these likenesses of Bastien-Lepage's parents are absolutely true to
life, and how much better we like them as they are, in the simple
intimacy of daily life, than if they had been decked out, all spick and
span, as a less scrupulous artist would inevitably have shown them to
us!
Bastien-Lepage's brother, himself a painter of some talent, has
preserved in his studio at Neuilly a certain number of the artist's
works, which he surrounds with pious care and feelingly exhibits to
occasional visitors. The family portraits are there, pulsating with life
and radiating that generous peasant kindliness which finds
expression in a broad and tender smile. The father, seated in a chair in
his garden, an old man with shrewd yet friendly eyes, seems so real, so
actual, that we almost expect him to step down from his frame to bid us
welcome. And what a marvel the _Portrait of my Mother_ is, which forms a
companion piece on the same wall! A somewhat wistful charm pervades this
face, with its deeply graven lines, and an infinite tenderness, a true
mother's tenderness, hovers over the thin, pale lips.
[Illustration: PLATE IV--HAY-MAKING
(Museum of the Luxembourg)
A masterpiece of contemporary painting, because of the truth of its
attitudes and the vigour of its execution. It would be impossible to
render more forcibly the blissfulness of rest when the body has been
racked by the exhausting labour of the soil. In this picture,
Bastien-Lepage revealed himself as an incomparable painter of rural
life.]
Perhaps this is the moment, in the presence of these pictures, to
emphasize Bastien-Lepage's great value as a colourist. Few contemporary
painters have used colour with so much tact, such veritable mastery as
he. Others have employed more dazzling tonal schemes and have achieved
more gorgeous effects, but no one has rendered with such exact truth the
tints of the flesh, the grayish folds of wrinkles, the profound light of
the eye. And his colour is always clear, always unmistakably employed
to produce a sought-after effect. There is no artifice, no trick-work,
it is all straightforward, honest, precise; the opposition of light and
shade never result in opacity, bitumen plays no part in his canvases,
the astonishing relief of which is obtained by means of such perfect
simplicity that it recalls the inimitable technique of Correggio.
In 1878 he exhibited _Hay-making_, that magisterial page from the life
of the fields which to-day is the pride of the Luxembourg museum, and
which the art of the engraver has scattered broadcast to the extent of
millions of copies.
This picture represents a vast sun-bathed meadow, overstrewn with
new-mown hay and punctuated, here and there, by the rounded cones of the
stacks. Against the blue background of the sky, green hill-tops trace an
undulant line. In the foreground a robust, bony-armed country-woman is
seated on the grass, her legs stretched out before her in an attitude
expressive of the utter weariness resulting from the work performed.
Her head, solidly planted on her massive neck, is a marvel of realism;
in her vulgar peasant face we may read health, strength, and a sort of
dulled mentality born of physical fatigue. In every fibre of her
exhausted body the woman is veritably resting, and through her
half-parted lips it seems as though we could detect the passage of her
hurried breathing. The man beside her, no less worn out than she, is
stretched at full length on the thick couch of grass, and with his hat
over his face, to shelter it from the sun, he is sleeping as though dead
to the world.
Every detail of this canvas is perfect, because every detail is true,
drawn straight from life, the fruit of minute observation. In it
Bastien-Lepage once more affirms his predilection for the open country;
and nothing could be more impressive than these two uncouth, vulgar,
homely human beings, set amid the splendour of a meadow turned golden by
the sun. It is an every-day spectacle; it would not seem at first sight
to contain material for a picture. But Bastien-Lepage has succeeded in
proving indisputably that beauty does not consist solely in the harmony
of the body, but in the impression which emanates from scenes that are
most humble in outward appearance. In these few square feet of canvas
the artist has summed up, perhaps without intending it, all the majesty
of nature and all the grandeur of the life of the fields. It is scarcely
necessary to add that this work is a transcript of the soil of Lorraine,
that good natal soil which he loved so profoundly and to which he
returned eagerly, year after year.
Bastien-Lepage was exclusively the painter of the rural aspects of
Lorraine; he loved its horizons, its fertile and undulating plains. And
when, occasionally, he ventured into allegory, the background was still
Lorraine, and the characters were developed in the familiar setting of
his native village, Damvillers. And how he loved it! How he enjoyed the
warm atmosphere of affection which always awaited him when his
father, grandfather, and valiant and devoted "little mother" gathered at
night around the family table! He made his home in Paris, because
residence there was indispensable, both for business and artistic
reasons; but the moment that he could escape from the capital and its
constraints, he would go to rest and gather new energy in the midst of
the family circle. He had a spacious studio installed in the second
story of the ancestral home; and there he worked, absolutely happy so
long as he could see the old grandfather at his side, pipe in mouth,
examining the work with a knowing air, and the father and mother in a
sort of ecstasy, as they watched him fill in his canvas.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--PORTRAIT OF M. HAYEM
(Museum of the Luxembourg)
A marvel of discernment and of rendering. The face, to be sure, has a
strong originality; but there is no slight merit in having expressed
with such striking truth the piercing intelligence of the eyes that
twinkle behind the lenses of the spectacles, and the energy, tempered
with satiric humour, of his whole odd physiognomy.]
Nevertheless, Bastien-Lepage was no studio painter; it was not from the
height of a window that he chose to contemplate nature, but in the open
fields, in the very heart of the furrows; and it was there also, in the
midst of the wheat and the rye, that he set up his easel and painted
his peasants in action, in the daily fulfilment of their thankless
task. And by picturing them thus, without artifice, in all their
simplicity of gesture and coarseness of feature, he imbued his canvases
with a profound spirit of poetry, through which the often brutal realism
of his subjects was redeemed and ennobled. In the presence of these
peasants he experienced a joy more genuine than he had ever felt before
the rarest canvases in any museum. Not that he denied or disdained the
genius of the great ancestors of painting; he had too much reverence for
his art ever to dream of doing so. But when it came to a question of
training, he could learn more from nature than from them. Listen to his
own exposition of his ideas:
"What a pity," he wrote, "that we are initiated, whether we will or not,
into traditions and routines, under the pretext that this is the way to
train us to be artists! It would be so simple to teach the use of brush
and palette, without ever once mentioning the name of Michelangelo or
Raphael or Murillo or Domenichino! We could then go home, back to
Brittany or Gascony, Lorraine or Normandy, and peacefully paint the
portrait of our own province; and if some morning the book we had
chanced to read aroused the wish to paint a Prodigal Son, or Priam at
the feet of Achilles, we could reconstruct the scene to suit ourselves,
without needing to resort to the museums, taking the setting from our
own surroundings and making use of the models close at hand, as though
the old drama dated only from yesterday. That is the way for an artist
to succeed in breathing the breath of life into his art and in making it
beautiful and appealing to the eyes of the whole world. And that is the
goal towards which I am striving with all my strength."
As painter of the open air, he became in a certain sense the founder of
a school, without meaning to be; for his conception of the painter's art
won over a whole group of young artists who united in hailing him as
their master. Each year his offerings to the Salon were impatiently
awaited, and his followers gathered in full force before them,
discussing, comparing, acclaiming; each Salon became the occasion for a
new success, the critics were unanimous in praising him, the public
adopted his pictures for their own, because they could understand his
clear and rigorous manner. Whatever hostility he met with was among his
own colleagues, at least among such of them as were discouraged and
humiliated by his vigorous originality. Nevertheless, the Exposition of
1878, at which he had gathered together all his works, was an especially
triumphant occasion for him; yet when the awards were distributed, he
discovered that he had received nothing but a medal of the third class.
At the Salon of 1879, Bastien-Lepage exhibited his _Women gathering
Potatoes_, which formed a companion piece to his _Hay-making_. Here
again we have the landscape of Lorraine and the eternal and infinitely
varied theme of rural labour. In a sun-parched field two women are
toiling to reap the harvest of potatoes. While the one in the middle
distance is stooping to turn up the ripe bulbs from the soil, the other,
placed in the foreground, is striving to empty the contents of her
basket into a sack which she holds open by a wonderfully natural
movement of her knee. Nothing could be simpler or more humble than this
subject, and yet one feels drawn towards it, conquered by the truth of
these two figures, both in their attitude and their expression.
Involuntarily memory conjures up another canvas, _The Gleaners_, and we
realize that it is impossible to resist that higher appeal which the
great artists succeed in giving to the most commonplace episode of
farming life. But, unlike Millet, Bastien-Lepage does not awaken in us
any compassion for these beings who toil, stooping above the earth; no
touch of bitterness saddens his pictures, and the types which he shows
to us have the healthy vigour of peasants who live their lives in the
open air and love the soil which nourishes them.
This picture, when it appeared, produced a sensation. Coming directly
after the _Hay-making_, it definitely established Bastien-Lepage's
talent and placed him in the foremost rank of painters of rural life.
The critics hailed this powerful canvas with enthusiasm. Theodore de
Banville, writing of the Salon of 1879, said: "M. Bastien-Lepage is the
king of this Exposition. Young as he is, he has started in to produce
masterpieces: he is very wise! For in later years an artist continues to
copy himself, with more or less cleverness and success; but the creative
genius has taken wing, like a bird on whose tail we have failed to drop
the indispensable grain of salt. The _October Season_ pictures the
harvesting of potatoes. The earth, the encompassing air as far as we can
see, the sky, the solitude laden with silence, are all evoked for us in
this picture by the sincerity of its powerful painter; the peasant women
are done in a masterly manner, and precisely for the reason that he has
seen them apart from all convention and has not tried to idealize them
by any hackneyed device."
Albert Wolff was no less enthusiastic: "The colouring in _Women
harvesting Potatoes_ is ingratiating and discreet; not a discordant
touch disturbs the beautiful harmony of this canvas, over which the
silence of the open country has descended, enveloping the obscure toil.
It is only artists of superior powers who can embody so much charm in a
single conception."
Another feature of the same Salon was his magnificent portrait of
_Madame Sarah Bernhardt_, a marvel of expression and of delicate art,
embodied in a pale symphony of tenderest whites, blending harmoniously
with the warmest tones of gold. The great tragic actress is portrayed
draped, almost swathed, in a gown of white china silk, verging on the
faintest yellowish caste; she is posed in profile, that cameo-like
profile that has so often been portrayed. She is seated, with a sort of
intentional rigidity, on a white fur robe, and is examining a statuette
of Orpheus, in old ivory, which she holds in her hands. Her expressive
and intellectual features are treated with a vigour which does full
justice to the classic beauty and virile energy of the sitter.
"The work as a whole," wrote the critic of the _Revue des Beaux-Arts_,
"possesses supreme distinction and an admirable delicacy of colouring.
The silvery tones of the whites, the warm grays of the draped gown lead
up to the freshness of the delicate, rose-like flesh tints, beneath the
crown of close curled locks that seem at once massive and weightless.
The artist's hand was sure of itself; it neither groped nor hesitated.
The execution is such that the drawing of the gown and the lines of the
face seem to have been traced by an engraver's tool. In this case,
however, definiteness has not resulted in stiffness. The sharp design
has not imprisoned unwilling forms; it leaves them free to move as they
please within the limits of their contours which are its domain. It is
worth while to examine with a lens the marvellous process which, by
the aid of imperceptible half-tones, has softened the modelling of the
face and hands."
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--PORTRAIT OF M. X----
(Museum at Verdun)
Bastien-Lepage possessed the rare quality of being able to bestow the
same superior skill upon every part of a portrait. Being sincere before
all else, he never tried to shirk any difficulty; this is seen in the
care he took in painting the hands of all his various sitters, showing
something akin to vanity in the marvellous talent he displayed in
rendering them. In this portrait--just as in all the others--the hands
are quite as truly a miracle of execution as the face itself.]
These two pictures earned Bastien-Lepage the Cross of the Legion of
Honour and a definite recognition of his talent. The artist could not
keep his delight to himself and, good son that he was, wished to share
it with his beloved family; so he sent for them, to pay him a visit in
Paris. The grandfather and the "good little mother" arrived, full of
pride in this famous son, of whom the whole world was talking. He showed
them the sights of the city and was only too happy to have a chance to
introduce them to his friends; he took his mother to the big shops and
insisted on choosing silk cloaks and silk dresses for her. The poor
woman protested, saying that they were far too fine, that she would
never dare to wear anything like that. "Show us some more," ordered the
devoted artist, "I want mamma to have her choice of the best there is!"
After the old people had returned home to Lorraine, Bastien-Lepage set
out for England, where he was to paint the portrait of the Prince of
Wales, who afterwards became King Edward VII.
In this portrait of tiny dimensions the Prince is represented in fancy
costume, after the manner of Holbein. His garments recall in a measure
those worn by King Henry VIII, in the celebrated portrait done by the
great painter from Basle. The Collar of the Golden Fleece is displayed
upon his breast. In the background of the picture may be seen dimly,
through a veil of mist, the panorama of London and the gray ribbon of
the Thames. The portrait is a little gem, which Bastien-Lepage wrought
with the minuteness and affectedly hieratic mannerism of Holbein and the
French primitive school. Although at present in possession of M. Emile
Bastien-Lepage, it will eventually find its place, together with a
goodly number of other canvases, in the museum of the Louvre, to which
the brother of the great artist intends to bequeath them.
It should be mentioned here, in connection with this work, that
Bastien-Lepage continued to make more and more of a specialty of
portraits of reduced dimensions, and that he acquired in this respect a
reputation of the first order. He loved these little canvases, scarcely
larger than miniatures, and he expended on their scanty surfaces an
inimitable skill; he embellished them with a wealth of accessory detail
which brings to mind, as we look at them to-day, the formidable labours
of the illuminators of the middle ages. But this goldsmith's work, far
from impairing the effect of the whole, adds a certain fascination to
it. And he expended upon the study of the face the same degree of
devotion that he gave to the rendering of a garment. His models relive
with an intensity of life such as could be expressed only by an artist
who has made a life-long study of nature in her minutest manifestations.
To name over his portraits would be to mention an equal number of
masterpieces. The catalogue would be too long, for Bastien-Lepage was
an indefatigable workman. We may content ourselves with citing those
that are most widely known: that of _M. Andrieux_, one-time Prefect of
Police, whose refined features are rendered with striking truth; that of
_J. Bastien-Lepage_, the artist's uncle, which is here reproduced and
which shows him violin in hand, a clear and vigorous piece of
brush-work, transcribing life in telling strokes, with an astonishing
simplicity of means. This fine example is to be seen to-day in the
museum at Verdun. And in the same museum there is still another that
deserves mention; namely, the excellent _Portrait of M. X._ And we must
not forget the _Portrait of Andre Theuriet_, born, like Bastien-Lepage,
on the banks of the Meuse and attached to the painter by ties of almost
fraternal affection. One feels that, in this picture, the heart must
have guided the hand, for it would be difficult to find another work
more magisterial in execution and more delicate in finish. And lastly,
there is _Mme. Bastien-Lepage_, the "good little mother," as the great
artist and loving son used to call her. He posed her in the garden of
the home at Damvillers. She is seated on a stone bench; on her knees
rests a large garden hat; her two hands are crossed, one over the other,
and in the left she holds a little bunch of field flowers. She is clad
in a loose dress of sombre colour, cut with a pelerine; and nothing but
the one bright spot formed by the white collar reveals the severity of
the costume. The whole attitude of the body in repose is perfect in its
truth and naturalness; but our admiration changes and quickens to
emotion when we raise our eyes to the level of the face of this "good
little mother," a bony, irregular face, almost ugly, but so gentle, so
kind, so touchingly illumined by the tender caress in the eyes as they
rest upon the adored son in the course of painting her. Those emaciated
features, which not even the crown of blonde hair is able to rejuvenate,
are unmistakably those of a mother; if we had not known, we should
inevitably have divined it; no one but a son, and a great artist as
well, could have crowned the brow of a woman with such an aureole of
gentleness and love.
Bastien-Lepage, whom those who envied him affected to regard as
dedicated wholly to the reproduction of rustic uncouthness, had no equal
in catching the radiance of feminine charms, even in their subtlest
manifestations. No one was more skilled than he in seizing and recording
the one particular trait, often elusive and intangible, which
characterizes a woman and makes her beautiful. What delicious portraits
of women we owe to him! Where could we meet with a more smiling image
than that of _Mme. Godillot_, radiant and seductive, a rosy vision in
the black velvet of her gown, relieved by the brilliant sheen of her
white satin corsage! And what studied and elaborate art was expended on
the _Portrait of Mme. Klotz_, whose magnificent brunette beauty emerges
like a gorgeous lily from the surrounding whiteness of her scarf, that
is all the more dazzlingly white by contrast with her sombre robe! And
still again, there is the _Portrait of Mme. Juliette Drouet_, another
beautiful and noble specimen of portraiture. And how marvellously
Bastien-Lepage could detect the hidden soul lurking in the inmost
recesses of his models and reveal it behind the transparent screen of
their eyes! If Bastien-Lepage had not achieved eternal glory as an
interpreter of rural life, he would still have remained celebrated as a
portrait painter.
But to Bastien-Lepage portrait painting was only a side issue, a form of
relaxation between two landscapes; his predilection, his one object in
life, so to speak, was to return constantly to his peasants, his scenes
of toil, his fields of Lorraine.
After his return from England he passed some months at Damvillers, when
an impulse seized him to visit Italy, to which the verdict of a
prejudiced committee had once upon a time barred his way. He proceeded
straight to Venice, and it may as well be acknowledged at once,
Venetian art left him cold, if not indifferent. He had never in the
least understood any of the big "set pieces," and in spite of all the
art of Veronese and Titian, in spite of their dazzling flare of colour,
he never succeeded in understanding their sumptuous allegories or in
accepting the fantastic interpretation of nature which the Venetians
allowed themselves. He returned to Damvillers, profoundly disillusioned
and more than ever convinced that nature alone, such as he saw it, was
deserving of the attention of the true artist. There would be no object
in discussing here how rightly or how ill founded such an opinion was;
we note it only to indicate once more the absolute independence of the
painter, his fixed determination never to imitate anyone.
And, beyond question, there is no resemblance to any other painter in
that curious and remarkable picture known as _Jeanne d'Arc listening to
the Voices_. Lorraine in heart and soul, Bastien-Lepage desired to pay
his tribute, as so many had done before him, to the glorious
heroine who, like him, had come from the banks of the Meuse. And he
wished also to restore her to her natural setting, with the greatest
degree of historic accuracy. Consequently it is in a Lorraine garden
surrounding a Lorraine cottage that he shows us Jeanne, the shepherdess;
around her are the familiar garden utensils such as peasants use to-day
just as they did in the fifteenth century. She is standing in an
inspired and attentive attitude, which gives to her whole countenance
that forceful character which Bastien-Lepage imprints upon all his
compatriots. For he wished to make her, in a certain sense, a composite
type of the women of the Lorraine race, such as Theuriet has described:
"The forehead low but intelligent, the eyes with drooping lids that half
conceal the somewhat sullen glance; the bones prominent in cheek and
jaw, the chin square, indicative of an opinionated race; the mouth
large, with half parted lips, through which one perceives the passage of
the deep-drawn breath." This head is always the same; under all the
variations in physiognomy we always meet with the same local type: it is
the head of the woman in _Hay-making_ and of the _Women gathering
Potatoes_, and it is also that of the "good little mother," so
fundamentally and emphatically representative of Lorraine.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE LITTLE CHIMNEY-SWEEP
(Collection of E. Bastien-Lepage)
This attractive picture, full of charm and vigour, belongs to the
closing years of the artist's life, at the time when he was enjoying the
flood tide of his talent. How much force and truth there is in this
picture of the little chimney-sweep, and what graceful nimbleness in the
movements of the cats that he is watching at play.]
Nevertheless _Jeanne d'Arc listening to the Voices_ was rather badly
received by the critics. Without disputing the originality and vigour of
the inspired shepherdess, they reproached the artist for the presence of
the traditional saints. Bastien-Lepage had indicated these under the
form of luminous vapour, radiating through the branches overhanging the
garden: St. Michael in the golden armour of a knight of the fifteenth
century, St. Margaret and St. Catherine as phantoms so diaphanous as to
be hardly perceptible. The idealists complained that the picture was
lacking in idealism; the realists were somewhat disconcerted to find the
apparitions there at all. It must be acknowledged that Bastien-Lepage
ceases to be himself the moment that he ventures to attempt the
supernatural or even allegory pure and simple. He feels that he is no
longer on familiar ground, he hesitates, he fumbles, and the harmony of
the work suffers in consequence. Nevertheless, in spite of this
undeniable defect, the face of Jeanne d'Arc will be remembered as a
piece of powerful painting and genuine inspiration.
At all events, Bastien-Lepage was keenly aware of the half-way nature of
his success, and from that day renounced forever the element of the
marvellous and confined himself to that concrete and tangible poetry
which emanates from the earth.
Some little time after his _Jeanne d'Arc_, he produced _The Mendicant_,
veteran knight of the road, whose lazy life is passed in going from door
to door, asking charity and compelling it if need be; suspicious looking
old tramp, perhaps a thief as well, who inspires fear and whose sack is
often filled through unwillingness to provoke him. The artist has
pictured him with a stout stick in his hand, stowing away the slice of
bread which a pretty slip of a girl in a blue apron has just given him.
This fine and vigorous canvas scored almost as much of a success, at the
Salon of 1881, as the admirable _Portrait of Albert Wolff_, a critic on
the _Figaro_ and close personal friend of the artist.
In 1882 he won a further success with his superb _Father Jacques_, a
masterly study of the Lorraine peasant, and with his charming _Portrait
of Mme. W._
In 1883 came _Love in a Village_, one of his most popular canvases, in
which he depicted with charming naturalness the uncomplicated and naive
courtship of rustic lovers. Here are a pair who are untroubled by
curious glances; the nearer houses of the village are quite close by.
Bending slightly towards his sweetheart, the man is murmuring his
avowals in her ear, in a voice that, we suspect, is by no means steady.
Strapping fellow that he is, he evidently lacks the habit of making
pretty speeches; we can see that from the embarrassed air with which he
twists his fingers. His words, however, are plainly not lacking in
eloquence, for the girl, type of buxom young womanhood that we have
already learned to know, has bent her head and, although her back is
turned, we are sure that she is blushing as she listens to his
declaration. A special atmosphere emanates from this picture, as well as
that profound spirit of poetry which is inseparable from the eternal
song of love.