Le Père Jacques

Overview

Le Père Jacques (The Wood Gatherer) is a life-size picture by Jules Bastien-Lepage: an old man bent under a great load of firewood trudges through an autumn wood, while a little girl in front of him stops to pick small flowers. Dated 1881, it was shown at the Salon of 1882 and is in the Milwaukee Art Museum (Layton Art Collection, accession L102; about 197 × 182 cm). (Sources: Wikipedia, « Le Père Jacques (The Wood Gatherer) »; Milwaukee Art Museum, collection record and blog.)

Marie and this painting

Marie mentions it from September 1882. On 14 September 1882 Rodolphe Julian, looking at her unfinished Pêcheur, says that Bastien-Lepage's Père Jacques « était admirablement fait mais que ça ne signifiait pas grand chose » whereas her fisherman is a true type (096.0239). On 27 April 1883 she writes that it is « la symphonie merveilleuse de la forêt en automne » and that the little girl picking flowers is a masterpiece (099.0229); on 3 May 1883 she lists it with the earlier pictures that lacked the heaviness of L'Amour au village (099.0335) and on 15 June it appears among his works (100.0165). On 28 October 1883, planning her own forest picture with flaming autumn leaves, she recalls that in the Père Jacques « la forêt était à ce qui m'en souvient trop avancée, c'était dépouillé et un peu gris » (102.0077).

Beware of the name: Jacques is also the boy of Marie's own Jean et Jacques.