Émile Bastien-Lepage

Who he was

Émile Bastien-Lepage (born 20 January 1854 at Damvillers, Meuse; died 19 January 1938 at Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French architect and later landscape painter, the younger brother of #Bastien_Lepage (Jules, 1848-1884). He was the son of Claude Bastien and Adèle Lepage. He trained as an architect, was a pupil of his brother in painting, exhibited at the Salon des artistes français in 1884 and 1889, was a member of the Société nationale des beaux-arts, and was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1934 (en.wikipedia.org and fr.wikipedia.org, "Émile Bastien-Lepage"). Jules painted his portrait in 1879 (Musée d'Orsay). In 1889 Émile designed the plinth of Rodin's monument to Jules at Damvillers; after Jules's death he gave the Rainettes garden at Damvillers its park-like form (fr.wikipedia.org, "Jules Bastien-Lepage").

Marie calls him "l'architecte", "le frère", "le faux Bastien" (as against "le vrai") and, teasingly, "le vil architecte", "ce subalterne" or "cette cuisinière d'architecte". He is not to be confused with his brother, who also appears under "Bastien" and "Bastien-Lepage" in the diary.

Marie and Émile

Meeting and the portrait (January - September 1882)

Marie hears of "the brother" before she meets him (094.0164; 094.0205). She first records meeting him at the Salon on 19 May 1882 (095.0076); on 20 June she meets only him there (095.0196). On 22 June 1882 he receives Marie and two friends in his absent brother's studio and shows his watercolours; she finds him an architect who "does not look like one", plainer and older-looking than Jules, and gifted (095.0204). The next day he poses for her small panel portrait: "I paint on Bastien's own palette, with his colours, his brush, his studio and his brother for a model" (095.0205-0206); on 30 June she dresses him in Jules's coat and hat (095.0236). Portrait and sitter are not otherwise recorded, and the picture has not been located.

On 1 July she calls him "a good fellow, not given to compliments, intelligent", in whom "one seems to hear the advice of the other" (095.0232); he dines with the family (095.0245). On 19 July he arrives to "withdraw a word" he had said the day before; Marie teases him that he has invented a pretext to see the beautiful Irma, her model, again, and records the gossip that he is in love with her herself: "Is it not silly that this boy has such good taste?" (095.0308-0316). In August he warns her, as Jules's emissary, not to go to Mme Cartwright's soirées, since she might be taken for one of the women there (096.0102; see #Mme_Cartwright).

The perspective lessons and the Gambetta funeral (December 1882 - April 1883)

On 9 December 1882 he dines with Tony, Julian and Bojidar (097.0218); on 13 December he gives Marie the first of a series of perspective lessons (097.0234), later attended by Mlle Canrobert and Alice Brisbane (098.0431-0432; 098.0484-0485), which Marie finds hard going but "almost amusing" (098.0485). On 6 January 1883 she watches Gambetta's funeral car, which she says the two brothers built, with Émile walking beside it, nearly holding a pall cord (097.0364); on 13 January she remarks that it was he who arranged the black veil at the Palais-Bourbon (098.0004). When the press credits Jules with the artistic arrangement of the Bashkirtseffs' ball of 13 January, Marie, afraid of seeming to have passed Émile off as "the real one", writes at once accusing him of having given the papers false information; his answer, "in deplorable French, poor architect", follows (098.0029-0035).

Through the spring of 1883 Marie uses him as a go-between to Jules and a confidant; she banters with him, then flatters and bullies him. On 5 March, after an evening of talk about "the great Bastien", she writes that his "sincerity" and his encouragement of her painting give her confidence (098.0452-0459), and she describes him as a "modest, heavy, plain, bald" man of twenty-eight (he was twenty-nine). On 26 March the Bashkirtseffs have photographs of Marie, her mother and Alice made at Benque's to match those of Mme and Mlle Canrobert; the five portraits are mounted in a plain Russian-leather screen bearing his monogram, as a gift for the lessons (098.0587-0588), and he is delighted with them (099.0017-0021). He is also asked to find the address of Saint-Marceaux's clay supplier (099.0162).

The quarrel of April - June 1883

On 28 April Marie expects Jules to come with his brother to an evening at home; Émile comes alone, and Marie, in a "little girl's pique", scolds him and says his brother is "dead to me" (099.0234-0236). On 30 April, at the Salon varnishing day, Émile brings Jules to her (099.0256-0259); that evening, in the costume ball at the Faleyeffs, he is a brigand (099.0267-0268). After the jury's mention honorable on 24 May 1883 Marie writes to Jules, and it is Émile who answers, "to my black sadness", that his brother had left on a journey and congratulates her warmly, signing "Emile Bastien-Lepage" (099.0607-0608). Marie sends him a harsh reply (099.0610) and for some weeks believes that Émile and Jules are both cooling towards her (099.0618-0619; 100.0083-0090). On 13 June he writes to her, in a style she calls "almost a concierge's", on the occasion of a bereavement in her family (100.0144).

Autumn 1883 - Spring 1884: confidant and critic

Marie turns more and more to him as the only person who can talk about Jules, and wonders whether he is in love with her (098.0531; 100.0369-0370; 103.0427-0428; 105.0543). He is also a frank critic of her work: in July 1883 he tells her that her last clay group would get her into the École's place competition (100.0449); in March and April 1884 he and the sculptor Franceschi both predict a medal for Un meeting (103.0621) and report to her the praise of others (103.0662-0668). On 3 May 1884 he arrives at half past eleven with news of her "real, great artist's success" (104.0088-0094), asks her permission for the engraver Charles Baude to photograph and engrave the picture (104.0092; 104.0097), and brings the collector M. Hayem to see it on 15 May (104.0141; 104.0170). On 2 June he says he would like to buy Un meeting himself but will begin with studies, as he bought early works by Roll, Gervex and Collin (104.0497).

The brothers' mother, Jules's illness and the trip to Algiers draw Émile and Marie closer. On 18 May 1884, when Marie hears that an artist has said "there is a very good Bastien-Lepage, signed Bashkirtseff", it is Émile who consoles her in the hall: if her picture resembles his brother's, it is only because she too seeks the truth before nature (104.0222-0227). The same evening a member of Marie's household recounts Jules's illness in detail before guests, to Émile's humiliation, and Marie, furious, scolds them in the small hours (104.0233-0237). On 3 June 1884 he is at the École des Beaux-Arts, where the Gambetta monument competition is on show, and Marie doubts he will win (104.0502). He then joins Jules in Algiers and writes to her from there on 20 June (104.0608). In September Marie recalls that he made a will when he left for Algeria, after the Gambetta monument; she notes that Jules was dying and Émile "had just missed Gambetta... it was the end of everything", and that her letter to him on that occasion, which he showed to Jules, is the origin of Jules's friendship, "dating from Algiers" (105.0751-0754).

Summer 1884: Jules's illness

From July Émile is almost a member of the Bashkirtseff household. He is "anéanti since his monument" on 5 July (105.0046); he trims Jules's beard (105.0053); he brings game (105.0729) and sends his hunting boots when Marie wants to try the size of Jules's shoes (105.0737); he installs her easel and canvas (105.0574; 105.0536) and takes her to photograph the street corner she is painting (105.0629; 105.0657). He is in the middle of designing a dining room and a chimney-piece panel for a house belonging to a M. Klotz, which for a time puzzles Marie, who wonders whether the house is Mme Mackay's (105.0340-0350; 105.0480). He "descends and carries his brother on his shoulders every day" up and down to their third-floor flat (105.0700; 106.0192). On 14 September Marie is so weak that Émile carries her up the stairs (106.0049); on 9 October she calls him "a sublime brother", with unsparing care, calm and simplicity (106.0160); on 20 October she records again that he carries Jules to her armchair (106.0190-0192). Marie's late verdict: "What an excellent nature Emile's is. I called him limited... I expressed myself badly" (105.0619).

After the diary

Per Kernberger (2013, Chronology), the funeral of Marie on 6 November 1884 at the Russian church in the rue Daru was planned by Émile Bastien-Lepage, and the stone mausoleum at Passy cemetery that he designed was completed in 1885. The women's-heritage guide womenonthemove.eu likewise names him as the builder of the mausoleum. Jules died on 10 December 1884; Émile designed the plinth of Rodin's monument to him at Damvillers (unveiled 1889).

Related entries

Sources