Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff

Les Foins

Also known as: Les Foins, les Foins, The Haymakers, Haymaking, Hay Making

Culture · Art
A young peasant woman sits dazed in a hayfield with her legs stretched out, staring ahead, while a man in a straw hat lies asleep on his back beside her, mown grass stretching to a village on the hill
Les Foins (1877), Jules Bastien-Lepage, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (RF 2748) Musée d'Orsay, Paris; public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Google Art Project)

Overview

Les Foins (Haymaking, 1877; signed « Damvillers 1877 ») is the picture that made Jules Bastien-Lepage the leader of French naturalism. A tired peasant woman sits in a hayfield with her legs stretched out in front of her, her eyes blank, while the man beside her sleeps on his back with his hat over his face. It was shown at the Salon of 1878 (no. 119). The state bought it from the artist's heirs in 1885 (decree of 7 March 1885) for the Musée du Luxembourg; it went to the Louvre in 1929 and to the Musée d'Orsay in 1980. (Sources: Musée d'Orsay catalogue record for Les Foins (notice 9174); Wikipedia, « Haymaking (Bastien-Lepage) »; the inscription and RF number from the Google Art Project record on Wikimedia Commons.)

Marie and this painting

Marie names Les Foins in the standing list of his masterpieces -- les foins, les pommes de terre, Jeanne d'Arc, le père Jacques -- against which she measures his L'Amour au village (099.0335, 3 May 1883; again 100.0165, 100.0167 on 15-16 June 1883, where it is one of the five canvases that justify him).

On 15 September 1883 she goes to see « les Bastien au Salon » (101.0361) and stops in front of the picture « comme on s'arrêterait devant une fenêtre ouverte à l'improviste sur la campagne. Dieu est grand mais Bastien l'est aussi » (101.0365); she says there are two life-size pictures, Les Foins and the Ramasseurs de pommes de terre (101.0363). On 22 November 1883 she revisits the Bastien-Lepage canvases and tells her correspondent: « Je vous abandonne Les Foins si vous voulez mais Saisons d'octobre... est un chef d'œuvre » (102.0310; reader footnote). On 15 July 1884 she praises its sleeping man as « vivant » in the same breath as Millet and Michelangelo (105.0201).

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