come. On the contrary, as the heat increased, Jules felt more unwell
and more fatigued. The last letter that he wrote to me reached me at
Granada, in that hotel, the “Siete Suelos,” where Fortuny and Henri
Regnault had lived. There was all through it a sentiment of touching
melancholy and discouragement.
“My good friends, this is delightful. It is too good to get your
photographs at the same time as your kind and affectionate letter.
I am glad you are going to Spain. Lucky fellows! Go along! while I,
who should so like to see a bull fight!… You had not time to come,
and indeed it was selfish to ask you. You could not have stayed more
than a few days. But that is to be done some day when I am no longer a
cripple, and when we can have two months before us. We are comfortably
settled here. At this moment I am writing to you under the tent set up
in the terraced court of our villa, with a wonderful view before me.
Placed a little to the left of a semicircle, formed by the hills of
Mustapha, 170 yards above the sea which flows at their base, we have
at every hour of the day, a different landscape; for the sides of the
hills are full of ravines, and the sun, according to the time of day,
throws their slopes into light, or makes a network of shade, in a way
quite peculiar to this corner of Africa. Little villas gleaming in the
sunshine or grey in the shade give effect to the groups of verdure, the
whole looking from the distance like a rich embroidery, with bosses
of green harmoniously arranged. All this runs down toward the Gulf of
Algiers, and trending away from here forms Cape Matifou. Above are
the crests of the Little Atlas, far away, and lost in heaven’s blue;
near by, sloping gardens spread out their golden or silvery verdure,
according as one looks upon olive or eucalyptus. Add to this the
perfume of the orange and lemon trees, the pleasure of telling you that
I embrace you all three, Tristan included, that I am a little better,
and you will have the state of my heart.
“Enjoy yourselves,――and you, my dear forester, with your Toledo eyes,
what are you going to give to the world after all this delight of
sunshine and kindly fellowship and the loving union of the charming
trio that you make? It seems to me I have the heart and voice to make a
fourth――what say you? Ah! that shall be after the rheumatism! Kindest
regards from mama and from me. A last embrace to all three of you.”
The improvement he had experienced on arriving in Algiers ceased about
the end of April. His strength and appetite gradually failed; and at
the end of May it was decided to take the invalid back to France. He
settled again in the Rue Legendre with the poor little mother, who
never left him afterwards. When I saw him again I was shocked at the
progress the disease had made. His thinness was such that my unhappy
friend was nowhere in the garments that were made for his journey. His
legs refused their service; he could no longer work; and yet he kept
a little hope. He had just begun a new treatment, and talked of going
into Brittany “as soon as he was strong enough.” He drove every day in
the Bois when the weather was fine, and spent the rest of his day on
cushions in the corner of the studio, occupied in contemplating, with a
heartrending look, his studies hanging on the walls. This inaction was
most distressing to him.
“Ah!” cried he, “if I was told: They are going to cut off your two
legs, but after that you will be able to paint again, I would willingly
make the sacrifice….”
He could only sleep now with the help of injected morphine, and he
waited with impatience for the hour when a new supply should give him
some relief, and a factitious drowsiness should make him forget his
suffering.
In proportion as digestion became more difficult his appetite became
more capricious. He wanted to have dishes made which reminded him of
the cooking of his village; then, when they were brought to him, he
turned away disgusted, without tasting them. “No,” said he, pushing
aside the plate, “that’s not it; to have it good it must be made down
there, prepared by the Damvillers people, with home-grown vegetables.”
And while he was speaking one saw by his moist eyes a sudden and
painful calling up of the impressions of former days; he saw all at
once the old home, the gardens and orchards of Damvillers at the fall
of evening, the peaceful village interiors at the time when the fires
were lighted for the evening meal.
As the season advanced his strength decreased. In September his brother
was obliged to take him on his back to carry him to the carriage, and
he drove about slowly for an hour in the avenues of the Bois. He could
not read, and was easily wearied by conversation. His nerves were
become very irritable, and the slightest odours were disagreeable to
his sense of smell. His courage seemed to forsake him; at the same time
he was always wanting to know what others thought of his illness. His
blue eyes with their penetrating look anxiously searched the eyes of
his friends, and of his mother, who never left his side. The heroic
little woman did her best to dissimulate, and was always smiling
and affecting a cheerfulness and a confidence which were painful to
see; then, when she could escape for a moment, she hastened into the
neighbouring room and melted into tears.
For months this cruel agony was thus prolonged. Bastien was only a
shadow of himself. On the 9th of December, during great part of the
night, he talked of Damvillers with his mother and his brother. Then at
about four in the morning he said to them, with a kiss, “Come, it is
time for children to sleep.” All three slept. Two hours later Mme. B.
was awakened by Jules, who asked for something to drink; she rose, and
brought him a cup of tea, and was alarmed on finding that the invalid
groped for the cup to guide it to his lips; he could no longer see; but
he still spoke and even joked about the difficulty he had in moving his
limbs.
Shortly afterwards he dozed, and sliding gently from sleep into death,
he expired at six in the evening, December 10, 1884.
I saw him next day lying on his mortuary bed, in the midst of a thick
covering of flowers. His poor emaciated face, with its sightless and
deeply sunk orbits, made him look like one of those Spanish figures of
Christ, fiercely cut in wood by Montanez.
On the 12th of December a long train of friends and admirers
accompanied his remains to the Eastern Railway Station, whence it was
conveyed to the Meuse. The next day, Sunday, the whole population of
Damvillers waited at the entrance of the town for the funeral carriage,
which brought back Bastien-Lepage to his native place.
The sad procession advanced slowly on that road from Verdun where the
painter had loved to walk at twilight, talking with his friends. A pale
mist blotted out those hills and woods whose familiar outlines he had
so often reproduced. The _cortège_ stopped before the little church
where he had intended painting his Burial of a Young Girl. The morning
was showery; the wreaths and festoons of flowers, placed the night
before on his coffin, were revived and refreshed by the moisture; when
they were heaped up upon the grave they seemed to come to life again,
and to send out with their renewed perfume a last adieu from Paris to
the painter of the peasants of the Meuse.
VI.
On the 17th of the following March, at the Hôtel de Chimay, now
connected with the École des Beaux Arts, the exhibition of the works of
him whom we have surnamed the “Primitif” was opened. All the works of
Bastien, with the exception of the Jeanne d’Arc, were collected there.
On visiting this exhibition the most prejudiced minds were struck with
the suppleness, the fecundity, and power of the talent of this painter,
carried off at the age of thirty-six. For the first time his varied and
original work could be judged as a whole.
One could study in detail these productions of a thoroughly
conscientious artist, and follow the growth of each composition as one
follows the development of a beautiful plant――first in the drawings,
so pure, so sober, and expressive; then in the sketches so truthful
and sincere; and, lastly, in the finished pictures, so harmonious and
luminous. By the side of the great pictures, Les Foins (The Hay), La
Saison d’Octobre (October), Le Mendiant (The Beggar), Père Jacques
(Father Jacques), and L’Amour au Village (Love in the Village), like
windows opening upon life itself, one admired that collection of small
portraits in which the most penetrating physiological observation was
united with an execution most masterly, precise, and delicate. One
passed delighted from those interiors worthy of the Dutch painters,
such as La Forge and La Lessive, to the landscapes breathing the
odours of the fields and of the woods, such as Le Vieux Gueux (The Old
Beggar), Les Vendanges (The Vintage), La Prairie (The Meadow), La Mare
(The Pool), Les Blés Mûrs (Ripe Corn), or to those full of air and
motion, like London Bridge and the Thames; then one stopped before La
Petite fille allant à la École (The Little Girl going to School), or
that poetic Idyl, Le Soir au Village (Evening in the Village).
[Illustration: THE INN.
_By Jules Bastien-Lepage._]
In this exhibition containing more than two hundred canvases and a
hundred drawings, there was nothing trifling, nothing indifferent. The
smallest sketches were interesting because they revealed passionate
worship of what is simple and natural, hatred of the almost and the
conventional, and the incessant striving of the artist after his ideal,
which is Truth.
A healthy and robust poetry exhaled from this collection. One left
the Hôtel de Chimay with a sensation of strengthening and reviving
pleasure, such as one gets from certain aspects of nature――deep woods,
limpid waters, and the bright sky of a summer morning.
Unhappily this joy was mixed with the sad thought of the sudden death
of the young man who had produced all this masterly work.
On first entering these rooms reserved for his pictures I was, for a
long time, impressed with a feeling that I had already experienced
at the exhibition of the works of the talented young artist, Mdlle.
Bashkirtseff, mown down like Bastien, in full youth, and at the same
time as he. This cruel death seemed only a bad dream.
On seeing again these unfinished sketches, these perfect portraits,
these canvases that I had seen him paint one after another, I felt as
if I was conversing with the painter and the friend who had created
all this. I felt that he was still living and in possession of all his
force. I expected every moment to see him appear among us, smiling,
happy, fortified by the now unanimous admiration of the crowd gathered
before his work.
Alas! instead of himself my eyes only met his portrait, placed in the
first room, and the mournful eloquence of the wreaths and flowers
attached to the frame recalled me harshly to the heartrending reality.
The poor “Primitif” will paint no more. The atelier at Damvillers where
we have spent such happy hours is closed for ever. The peasants of the
village will no more meet their countryman on the roads where he used
to work in the open air. The rustic flowers that he used to paint in
the foreground of his pictures, the blue chicory and the groundsel,
will flower again this summer by the edges of the fields, but he will
not be there to study and admire them.
Among the sketches exhibited by the side of the great pictures there
was one that I had already remarked at Damvillers, and that I now saw
again with deep emotion. It represents an old peasant woman going in
the early morning into her garden to visit her apple tree in blossom.
The nights of April are perfidious, and the spring frosts give mortal
wounds; the old woman draws to her a flowering branch and inspects
with anxious eye the disasters caused by the hurtful rays of the red
moon. Bastien-Lepage was like this tree, full of sap and of promising
blossom. For years the heavens had been clement to him, and the flowers
had given many and rich fruits; then in a single night a murderous
frost destroyed all――the open flowers by thousands, and the tree
itself. All that remains is the splendid fruit of past seasons, but the
exquisite flavour of that the world will long enjoy.
Things truly beautiful have wonderful vitality and last on through the
centuries, hovering above the earth where the generations of men go
turn by turn to sleep,――and this survival of the works of the spirit of
man is perhaps the surest immortality upon which he can count.
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE AS ARTIST.
[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF PORTRAIT OF BASTIEN-LEPAGE.
_By Augustus Saint-Gaudens._]
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE AS ARTIST.
The work of Bastien-Lepage ranks, to my mind, with the very best
in modern art. He brought to us what was in some ways a new view
of nature――one whose truth was at once admitted, but which was
nevertheless the cause of much discussion and criticism. It was
objected to mainly, I think, as not being in accord with established
rules, but nevertheless the objectors expressed their admiration for
the skill of the painter; while, on the other hand, for those who
accepted him (chiefly the younger men these), no praise was too great,
no admiration too enthusiastic.
It is only a few years since his untimely death was mourned as a loss
to the whole art-world, for his whole career is so recent that his
fellow-students are still young men, many of them only now beginning
to obtain full recognition; and yet it is perhaps long enough ago to
enable his work to be considered as a whole, and his place in the
art-movement to be seen. For although he was an innovator, and one
showing in all he did a strong individuality, the general direction of
his genius was given him by the artistic tendencies of his time.
It will be generally admitted that if painting has made any advance
in our day, if it shows in any direction a new departure, or fresh
revelation of the beauty that exists throughout nature, it is in
the development of the problems which have arisen from the study of
landscape and of the effects of light. There now prevails a close
and sincere study of nature, founded on the acceptance of things as
they are, and an increasing consciousness on the part of artists (or
perhaps it would be more correct to say an increasing courage on the
part of artists to express their conviction) that a picture should be
the record of something seen, of some impression felt, rather than
be formally constructed. And men have awakened at length to see that
all nature is beautiful, that all light is beautiful, and that there
is colour everywhere; that the endeavour to realize truly the natural
relation of people to their surroundings is better than to follow
unquestioning on the old conventional lines. This is, roughly speaking,
the modern standpoint, and it cannot be denied that it is an enormous
advance on the accepted artistic ideals of thirty or forty years ago.
And to the men who have brought this about――to the Pre-Raphaelite
brotherhood; to Millet, Corot, Rousseau, Courbet, Manet, and Mr.
Whistler――to all those who have fought the battle and to whom our
present clearer outlook is due, we owe a lasting debt of gratitude.
It is a little surprising now, that the work of Bastien-Lepage, based
as it is on the simple acceptance of nature, should have caused so
much discussion on its first appearance. For time has justified him;
we feel on comparing his work with other men of his time that it
marks a new departure, and we realize that it has helped to form our
present standpoint. But as the majority of people tune their eyes by
pictures and not by nature, and only admire in nature that which is
made manifest to them by their artistic prophet, it may be taken as
a compliment to a man of independent genius that when he discloses a
fresh view of nature, it is not for some time accepted. “Good gracious,
sir!” said an eminent critic, referring to Claude Monet, “like nature?
Yes; of course it’s like nature; but a man has no business to choose
that aspect of it!”
Every picture may be said to appeal to the spectator from two sides or
points of view――the literary and the æsthetic.
A picture may tell its story to perfection――may point a moral and all
the rest of it, and so fulfil the purpose of its author――and still,
or, as some extreme persons would say, therefore――may be bad art,
may indeed be not worthy to rank as art at all. Such pictures are
frequently seen. And again, a picture may, by raising and defining to
some inner sense emotions dimly felt by us before nature, leave us
with a fuller sense of beauty, a feeling of something revealed to us.
And yet it need have no subject or story. We are convinced that this
picture is beautiful: that no other form of artistic expression can
precisely so touch us. Such pictures are rare, but happily they do
exist. Yet, from the nature of things, it is impossible but that such a
picture should speak to some――ever so slight――extent to the mind; and
also the most literary picture is never without evidence of some desire
to please the eye.
The work of Bastien-Lepage seems to me to embrace both these points
of view. The literary and æsthetic sides of art were very evenly
balanced in him. If we take any individual work, as, for example, the
Beggar, we find a most perfect realization of character: the whole
life-history of the man seen and brought before us――evidently this was
the motive of the picture; yet the painting is in itself so full of
charm, the perception of colour so fine, that we feel he was equally
interested in that. He tried to hold the balance even. His work shows
an extraordinary receptive power, an unequalled (almost microscopic on
occasion) clearness of vision, allied with an absolute mastery of his
material. His attitude towards nature is one of studied impartiality,
and seems to show the resolute striving of an intensely sympathetic
nature to get at the actual optical appearances and to suppress any
hint of his own feelings. And his subjects are presented with such
force and skill that their truth to nature is at once felt, and if
a painter, you cannot fail also to feel the charm of his simple and
sincere method. You cannot tally it by any other painter’s work: it
stands by itself.
His impartial attitude towards his model constitutes one of
Bastien-Lepage’s distinctions. I am not sure that it is not the
distinct note of all his work. He paints a man――and the man stands
before you, and you ask yourself, “What is he going to say? What does
the artist wish to express?” You may make what you can of him; Lepage
gives you no clue. To me, I confess, this quality is a very high one;
it seems to indicate a great gift, and to be, if I may presume to say
so, akin to Shakespeare’s method of presenting his characters without a
hint of his own feelings towards them.
Although it is no doubt owing to Millet that Lepage’s eyes were opened
to the paintableness of country life, he saw his subjects in his own
way and approached them from his own point of view. With Millet the
subject and type were everything――the individual nothing. He was
passionately moved by his subject, and once its action and sentiment
were expressed, everything was subordinated to them. He cared nothing
for the smaller truths of detail provided the general impression were
true to his mental image, and his aim was avowedly to impose his
mental impression on the spectator. Lepage, on the contrary, appears
to avoid communicating his mental impression. He will give you the
visual impression, as truly as he possibly can; you may, if you please,
find――as he has found――pathos and poetry in it: as before the same
scene in nature, if you have sympathy; but for his part he will not
help you by any comment of his own.
And whereas with Millet the interest always centres in the subject, in
Lepage it centres in the individual. His pictures become portraits.
He chooses a good type, and sets himself to paint him at his work and
amid his natural surroundings, and, somehow or other, the subject, as
motive and reason for the picture, takes a subordinate place. And yet
this is not because anything belonging to the subject is slurred, but
because the attention is taken beyond the subject to the actors in
it. For his figures not only live; they convince us of their identity
as individuals, and gradually we get so interested in them that we
begin to forget what they are doing, and almost to wonder why they
are there. We are, in fact, brought so close to them that we cannot
get away from the sense of their presence. It is no small tribute to
Lepage’s skill that his people do so interest us; but is not this
interest a conflicting element in the picture? Is it to the advantage
of the picture that the interest should be so equally divided? I cannot
tell: when before a picture of Lepage’s I accept it in everything――on
thinking it over, I begin to doubt. There is no room for doubt about
Millet; no mistake about what he meant. With him the attention is
always concentrated on the business in hand: and without desiring to
qualify the great respect and admiration which I have for Lepage’s
work, it seems to me that the point of view of Millet included more
essential truths (or perhaps excluded those which were not essential to
the expression of the subject); and that for this reason Lepage’s most
successful pictures depend least upon the interest of subject, and most
upon the interest of portraiture.
For it is in his portraits that the great capacity of the man is best
seen; and they are altogether admirable. His people stand before you,
and you feel that they must be true to the very life. He loves to
place them in an even, open, light, and simply accepting the ordinary
conditions of his sitters, produces a surprisingly original result.
There is no forcing of effect, no slurring of detail――everything is
searched out relentlessly, lovingly. There is the same impartial
standpoint――the same apparent determination to keep himself out of
the picture. From the artist’s point of view they are altogether
delightful; modelled with the thoroughness of a sculptor, the colour
and atmosphere are always true, and the execution is unlaboured and
direct. It would be difficult to point to any modern portraits which
surpass for technical mastery and charm such works as the “First
Communion,” the portraits of his parents, his grandfather, of M.
Theuriet, Albert Woolf, Sarah Bernhardt, “Pas Meche,” and the Beggar.
Each of these is a complete picture, as well as being a portrait. The
elaborate dress of the actress, the cheap muslin and ill-fitting gloves
of the child, in the “First Communion”――all the matters of minor detail
are dwelt on with, in each case, the fullest sense of their literary
importance to the picture, and yet the painting of these things, as of
all else, is so delightful in itself that the artist desires no other
reason.
While landscape entered as a matter of course into his rustic pictures,
it was always subordinate to the figures; although he carried the
finish of the foregrounds in these pictures to the farthest possible
point, delighting to express the beauty of everything――weeds, sticks,
stones, the clods of earth――all was felt, and shown to be beautiful.
But he painted also some admirable landscapes: of these I have seen but
few, and the recollection of one in particular remains with me as one
of the most beautiful things I have seen. It is a field of ripe golden
corn; beyond are the distant fields and low hills, and overhead in the
clear blue sky a few clouds. The corn is swaying and rustling in the
breeze, and small birds are flitting about. The whole scene is bathed
in daylight and fresh air: with no great stretch of fancy one can see
the corn moving, and hear the singing of the birds. One is filled
with a sense of the sweetness of nature and the beauty of the open
fields. And the picture is so simple――no effort in design, no artifice
apparent――it impresses as a pure piece of nature.