Jules Bastien-Lepage 1848-1884

By Isabella Bragoli

Jules Bastien-Lepage, Jeanne d’Arc, 1879, oil on canvas, The Met Fifth Avenue

One of the foremost Realist painters of the late 19th century in France, Jules Bastien-Lepage was noted for his sentimental genre painting of rural life. Although the artist grew up in the era of Impressionism, his style of plein air painting was closer to the naturalism of the Realism art movement than the light-oriented art of Claude Monet (1840-1926). During his tragically short career (his early death was caused by cancer), Bastien-Lepage focused his attention on two types of subject: portraiture, most notably of theatrical performers such as Sarah Bernhardt, and rural subjects, mostly of everyday scenes, typically painted in the town of Damvillers where he grew up. His style of painting encompassed important elements from both his predecessors as well as his contemporaries. Thus, Bastien-Lepage borrowed techniques (mostly compositional elements) from realist artists like Gustave Corbet and Jean-Francois Millet, as well as the light tones and vibrant touch of the Impressionists. French realist writer, Emile Zola, described Bastien-Lepage as "the grandson of Courbet and of Millet", and later characterised his painting as "Impressionism corrected, sweetened and adapted to suit the taste of the masses."

Jeanne d’Arc c.1879 depicts the French national hero and medieval teenaged martyr, Joan of Arc, from the French province of Lorraine who gained new status as a patriotic symbol when France ceded part of the territory to the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). Bastien-Lepage, also a native of Lorraine, depicts the moment when Saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine appear to the peasant girl in her parents’ garden, rousing her to fight the English invaders in the Hundred Years War. Critics at the Salon of 1880 praised Bastien-Lepage’s use of pose and facial expression to convey Joan’s spiritual awakening but found the inclusion of the saints at odds with his naturalistic style. The notoriously ‘frank and severe’ art critic, Marie Bashkirtseff, wrote that "Nothing in painting has ever moved [her] like the Jeanne d'Arc of Bastien-Lepage. . .there is something indescribably mysterious and marvellous about it. There you have a sentiment which the artist has thoroughly understood, the perfect and intense expression of great inspiration, -something great and human, inspired and divine at the same moment."

Despite Bastien-Lepage’s international fame, his reputation dimmed soon after his death and his work became little more than a footnote in most early studies of French 19th century painting. It was not until the last quarter of the 20th century that his paintings were rediscovered and underwent a scholarly reappraisal, and his importance as one of the leading artists of the Realist tradition in France was fully recognised.

Bibliography

Collins, John. "The Identity of Bastien Lepage's 'Girl with a Sunshade' at the Fitzwilliam." The Burlington Magazine 140, no. 1142 (1998): 323-25

Storm, William. "Impression Henry Irving: The Performance in the Portrait by Jules Bastien-Lepage." Victorian Studies 46, no. 3 (2004): 399-423