Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884)

The day after Jules Bastien-Lepage died at his Paris studio on rue Legendre, on the 10^th December 1884, the world press announced his premature death and burial in the family cemetery in Damvillers in the Meuse region of France. In just ten productive years, this son of a modest farming family had won an eminent place in the French and international art scene, even if it was challenged at times.

The man who, in 1879, Zola considered as “the grandson of Courbet and of Millet” and as one of the leading lights of naturalism, received an academic training in Alexander Cabanel’s studio. After two failures in the Prix de Rome competition, in 1875 and 1876, Bastien-Lepage managed to establish an original body of work.

He succeeded in looking at things from the side of the realists, his elders, as well as that of his contemporaries, the defenders of the new painting from which he took the light tones and the vibrant touch.

Bastien-Lepage devoted his short life to two types of subject: firstly to portraits, for which he had a loyal clientele among performers – from Sarah Bernhardt to Coquelin the elder – and among the republican middle class – from Simon Hayem to Leon Gambetta – and secondly, to rural subjects, often painted in the places of his childhood. He captivated the public at the Salon with The Hayfield (1877, Musée d’Orsay), Season of October (1878, Melbourne National Gallery of Victoria), with Père Jacques (1881, Milwaukee Art Center) and with Rural love (1882, Moscow, Pushkin Museum).

Once he became successful, the artist travelled, particularly to England, Switzerland and Italy, and brought back not only landscapes but also paintings halfway between portraits and genre paintings, in which he sketched the rural and urban lives of children and adolescents, the heroes of his Petit colporteur endormi (1882, Tournai, musée des Beaux Arts) or his The London Bootblack (1882, Musée des Arts Décoratifs).

Although having had several exhibitions in the Meuse region, Jules Bastien-Lepage did not have a one-man show in Paris until the exhibition at the Hôtel de Chimay in 1885. In order to make good this omission, and as part of the studies promoting a better understanding of all forms of artistic expression in the second half of the 19^th century, the Musée d’Orsay, in conjunction with Jules Bastien-Lepage’s native region, has undertaken to bring together most of the artist’s important works, his successes at the Salon and more intimate works, from public and private collections in Europe, America and Australia.

A number of discoveries relating to the artist’s life, his history and intention expressed through his work, now enable us to abandon the romantic vision his family and friends put forward after his early death, and establish the real version of his constant social struggle and his committed aesthetic efforts.