Jules Bastien-Lepage

Who he was

Jules Bastien-Lepage (born 1 November 1848 at Damvillers, Meuse; died 10 December 1884 in Paris) was a French painter and engraver, the leading figure of the naturalist school of the early 1880s. He was the son of Claude Bastien and Adèle Lepage, a modest family of landowners and peasants; his younger brother was #Emile_Bastien_Lepage, later an architect and landscape painter. He came to Paris in 1867, worked for a time in the post office, entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1868 and studied under Alexandre Cabanel (fr.wikipedia.org, "Jules Bastien-Lepage"). Marie notes that he was already a painter in 1870 and "made the campaign" of that war (103.0191).

His early recognition came with Au printemps (1873) and the Portrait du grand-père de l'artiste (1874), which won a third-class medal at the Salon of 1874. In 1875 his Annonciation aux bergers placed him second for the Prix de Rome; Marie later notes that Commère won it "against Bastien" (100.0047). The pictures that made his name are the peasant subjects painted in the open air at Damvillers: #Les_Foins (1877), #Saison_d_octobre (1878), #Jeanne_d_Arc (1879, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), #Le_Pere_Jacques (1881) and #L_Amour_au_village (1882). He was also a sought-after portraitist: #Sarah_Bernhardt, the Prince of Wales, Albert Wolff, and Juliette Drouet (#Portrait_de_Mme_Drouet, 1883) were among his sitters. Émile Zola praised his talent while distrusting his popular success (fr.wikipedia.org).

Bastien-Lepage died at his studio in the rue Legendre (17th arrondissement) on 10 December 1884, aged thirty-six, of cancer, six weeks after Marie. He is buried at Damvillers, where a monument by Auguste Rodin, on a plinth designed by Émile Bastien-Lepage, was unveiled in 1889 (fr.wikipedia.org; en.wikipedia.org, "Émile Bastien-Lepage"). The Musée Jules Bastien-Lepage in Montmédy is devoted to him.

How Marie names him

She writes "Bastien", "Bastien-Lepage", and from 1883 simply "Jules" (and, in her teasing moods, "le vrai", "le grand, le seul, l'unique", "le petit peintre de Damvillers", "le compatriote de Jeanne d'Arc"). His brother Émile is "le frère", "l'architecte", "le faux Bastien" or "Emile Bastien"; the two must not be confused, since the brother's page uses a similar alias.

Marie and Bastien-Lepage

Admiration from a distance (1879-1881)

Marie knows his painting long before she knows him. On 20 September 1879 she and a friend call at his studio and find him away (086.0308); on 4 October she writes that "for me, at present, painting is Bastien-Lepage and sculpture is Saint-Marceaux" (086.0345). At the Salon of 1880 she studies his Jeanne d'Arc (088.0204) and finds the head "an absolutely first-rate work", even if the landscape harms the figure (089.0006). In February 1881 she calls him "my favourite" (091.0090); in May she says she must not follow him, or anyone, in her own work (092.0014), and wishes he were her teacher in place of #Robert_Fleury (092.0042).

The first meeting and the studio visits (January 1882 - August 1882)

On 21 January 1882 Mme Cartwright takes Marie to his studio. She finds "the little Bastien", very small and fair, with Breton-style hair, a turned-up nose and a boy's beard; his large open-air canvases fill her with "admiration, dread and envy", and she cannot look at him as a master but wants to treat him as a comrade (094.0194). He gives her two brushes, which she keeps as relics (094.0199). On 30 January he visits her and stays over an hour, looking at her work "with flattering severity" (094.0217). In May she calls him "the first, the most charming, the strongest, the truest artist of our time", with Saint-Marceaux (095.0060). He is in London in June (095.0204); on 22-23 June Marie paints his brother Émile in his studio, with his palette, brushes and coat (095.0206). On 18 August she calls at the studio while he is away and see what he brought back from London (096.0095-0100); the next day she learns that he has left for Damvillers for five months (096.0102).

Friendship, the Gambetta funeral and the first rift (December 1882 - February 1883)

On 14 December 1882 Marie sees the canvases he has brought back from Damvillers (097.0238-0241); on 17 December he comes to her studio and stays more than two hours while she is, by her own account, nervous and clumsy (097.0257-0261); on 23 December he and his brother dine with the Bashkirtseffs (097.0278). When Léon Gambetta dies on 31 December 1882, Bastien-Lepage is at Ville d'Avray and the Palais-Bourbon (097.0349); Marie reports that the two brothers built the funeral car for the state funeral of 6 January 1883, and finds it disappointing (097.0364). On 16 January she is taken to Gambetta's house at Ville d'Avray, where Bastien-Lepage is painting the death chamber, and watches him work (098.0058-0074). Between these two dates a newspaper article credits him with the artistic decoration of the Bashkirtseffs' ball; Marie, embarrassed, writes angrily to Émile (098.0029-0035) and fears the incident has ended their "budding friendship" (098.0041). The quarrel is mended at a reception on 1 February, where he is "affectionate, kind" to her (098.0248-0250). In late January Marie also learns of gossip that Mme Mackay is jealous of her (098.0101-0106; see #Mme_Mackay).

The longing for his friendship (1883)

During 1883 the admiration becomes an obsession that Marie analyses in the diary with Stendhal's theory of "crystallisation" (100.0351). On 24 February she writes that she is "continually preoccupied with Bastien-Lepage" and avoids saying his name in company (098.0398). On 15 March she sees L'Amour au village in his studio and calls the picture "nature itself" (098.0499-0500). At the Salon opening on 30 April she spends an hour with him at the buffet; he explains his Ophélie to her as a "misérable d'amour" (099.0258-0262). On 9 May he comes with Émile to a dinner she gave for Gaillard, Clovis Hugues, Julian, Tony and others (099.0382-0383), but afterwards she fears he dislikes her (099.0414-0416).

After the Salon jury gave her only an honourable mention on 24 May 1883, she wrote to him; Émile answered for his brother, who had left on a journey, and Marie replied with an angry note (099.0585-0610). In July she concludes that her open admiration has kept him at a distance (100.0348-0355). When he finally dines with the family on 12 August she barely speaks and is furious with herself (101.0021-0030); the next day she sends Émile a note for "your adorable J.", complaining that he did not invite her to see his studies (101.0064-0069). On 15 September she sees Les Foins and the Saison d'octobre at the September exhibition and writes of a "richness of tone found only in nature itself" (101.0361-0365). From October she is torn between wanting to give him up and thinking of nothing else (101.0525-0545; 101.0596-0601; 102.0103), jealous of Mme Mackay, whom she describes as his companion (101.0576-0578; 102.0204-0205).

Through all this she is an uncomfortable disciple. She believes that her own paintings, such as the street boys of Un meeting, look like his (098.0402; 100.0319-0321), and she is amused and irritated when the press calls her his pupil or "emulator" (100.0169; 102.0250). Her criticism is sharp as often as her praise: she finds the background of L'Amour au village heavy (099.0309; 099.0334-0335) and, after seeing Millet's pictures in June 1883, momentarily withdraws the word "masterpiece" from his (100.0167).

His illness (1884)

In January 1884 Marie hears of his plans at Damvillers and Concarneau, among them Les Bergers à Bethléem (103.0039; #Les_Bergers_a_Bethleem), which she sees as a pendant to her own #Les_Saintes_Femmes. On 7 March he is back in Paris, seriously ill, with nothing for the Salon, and about to leave for Algiers (103.0469-0471). Marie, mocking and anxious in turn, sends a pen sketch ("Jules consumed by melancholy") to Émile (103.0475-0478); she is told in May that he is "said to be doomed" (104.0082) and writes of a probable cancer of the stomach (104.0164). She sends him a napkin embroidered by Dina with his Amour au village (104.0174), which delights him when he is back in Paris (104.0702). He returns to Paris in late June (104.0669).

The last months (July - October 1884)

From July Marie and her mother and aunt visit him at the rue Legendre almost daily and drive with him to the Bois de Boulogne. On 5 July Mme Bashkirtseff cuts his hair while his mother watches (105.0049-0054). On 24 July he weeps with pain, saying "if I cannot be cured, I would at least like not to suffer so much" (105.0296). Marie sends him soups, salmon in jelly, a toy St Anthony from the Neuilly fair, and a small child's pillow that he keeps with him (105.0067; 105.0148; 105.0336; 106.0077). The diary records her disappointment that he never shows warmth towards her in particular (105.0231-0233), her tenderness for him as an invalid (105.0323-0325), and her admission that she is jealous of his other friends and of Mme Mackay (105.0354-0355). By September he is carried to the Bois and back (106.0067; 106.0190-0192). Marie writes on 13 September that he told her she should consider herself fortunate, since no woman had had such a success after so few years of work (106.0017-0018), and on 1 October that "he is dying" (106.0139). When she is too weak to go out, he comes to her: on 11 October he spends the afternoon at her house, and she holds his hand (106.0169-0170); on 16 October "Bastien came again, and Robert-Fleury" (106.0178); on 20 October his brother half-carries him to her armchair (106.0190). Her last reference to him is on that day (106.0190-0192). Marie died on 31 October 1884; he outlived her by forty days.

After the diary

Per Kernberger (2013), Marie's funeral on 6 November 1884 at the Russian church in the rue Daru was planned by Émile Bastien-Lepage, who also designed the stone mausoleum at Passy cemetery completed in 1885. The Bastien-Lepage family (Jules, Émile and their mother) had become close friends of the Bashkirtseffs in 1884: Marie writes that Mme Bastien-Lepage throws herself into her arms, calling her "my dear little Marie" (105.0549).

Related entries

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