André, T. Clausen, G. Sickert, W. Blind, M. Jules Bastien-Lepage and His Art. A Memoir (1892)

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JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE
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.H'l.KS
HASTIKN-LEPAGK
AND
BY
JULES BASTIEN LEPAGE

HIS ART. A MEMOIR,
ANDRE THEURIET
JULES
BASTIEN-LEPAGE
AS
GEORGE CLAUSEN,
A.R.W.S.; MODERN REALISM IN
PAINTING, BY WALTER SICKERT,
N.E.A.C.; AND, A STUDY OF
MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF, BY
ARTIST, BY
MATHILDE BLIND
ILLUSTRATED WITH REPRO-
DUCTIONS OF BASTIENLEPAGE'S
AND MARIE
WORKS
BASH-
KIRTSEFF'S
LONDON:
T.
PATERNOSTER
FISHER UNWIN,
SOU.ARE.
MDCCCXCII.
553
BaqT>4
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Jules Bastien-Lepage and his
Theuriet
J
es
Bastihn-Lepage
as
Art:
Artist.
Memoir.
.
By Andre
.
.11
By George Clausen,
A.k.YV.S
Modern Realism
107
in
Painting.
By Walter
Study of Marie Bashkirtseff.
Sickert, N.E.A.C.
By Mathilde Blind
971
129
145
OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
LIST
Jules Bastien-Lepage.
After a Portrait by Himself.

Frontispiece
PAGE
Grandfather Lepage.
Haykikli).
Jpi.es
Bastien-Lepage
By Jules Bastien-Lepage
43
Sarah Bernhardt.
......
Joan of Arc Listening to the Voices.

Lepage
The Beggar.
Sketch for Father Jacques.

Inn.
By
Bas-relief
Jiu.es
The Little Sweep.

Marie Bashkirtseff.
A Meeting.
of
7i
75
101
.....
Bastien-Lepage.
By Augustus
no
132
From a Portrait by Herself
By Marie Bashkirtseff
Marie Bashkirtseff.
55
61
Bastien-Lepage
Portrait
Saint-Gaudi xs
5i
By Jules Bastien
Father Jacques, the Woodman.
The
25
The Communicant.
The
By
From a Photograph
l6q
187
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE AND HIS ART.
AS MAN AND ARTIST.
IN
month
the
of June,
1856, the chances of a
weeks
six
me
compelled
Civil Service noviciate
to live for
town on the
at Damvillers, a small
Meuse, half-way between Verdun and Montmedy.

Damvillers was formerly
and
fortified,
had the
honour of being besieged by Charles V., but there
now nothing
left to recall
The whole
days.
The people
Orchards now cover
the
scattered
memory of
aspect of the place
rural.
tions once stood,
the
are
those warlike
is
with
occupied
peaceful and
agriculture.
the ground where the fortifica-
and form a
houses, in a
circle of
valley
verdure round
where the Tinte
winds through osier beds and meadows.

right a vine-covered
on the
little
left
The
monotony of the
by rows
mound
a succession of
town.
of
grey,
fields
poplars.
is
like the
wooded
the
back of a camel,
slopes, enclose the
blue hills
and meadows
The
On
ill-kept
are
is
low.
The
broken only
solitary streets
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE.
14
bordered by
the
labourers'
houses
with
grey
or
dingy yellow fronts, have the same washed-out look

as the landscape.
For
here
young fellow of twenty-two there was nothing

I
particularly attractive.
evenings with
my
elbows on
my
spent
my
solitary
window-sill watching
the twilight descend upon the brown-tiled roofs which

enclose the great square as with a horizontal frame.
In one corner the large green waggon of a travelling

pedler was resting by the side of rows of earthenware, whose
polished
surface
the
reflected
lights
from the window of the neighbouring inn.
My
only amusement consisted in listening
^to
the
chatter of some girls sitting at the tinner's door, or
the shouts of the children playing at ball by the wall

of the corn -market.
little
thought then that among these urchins,
with torn pinafores and tangled hair, was to be found

a future master of contemporaiy painting, and that
the
name
of Bastien-Lepage
evening by the
thrown
children's voices,
to
and
fro
each
and repeated by
the echoes of the solitary square, would come to be
known, and received with acclamations throughout

the world, by
Artists.
all
who
are interested in Art
and in
I.
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE was born

villers,
on November
1,
at
Dam-
1848, in a house which
forms one of the corners of that square of which

I have just spoken
simple, well-to-do farmer's
house, the front coloured yellow, the shutters grey.
On
opening the outer door one finds oneself at once
the kitchen, the
in
villages,
with
its
coloured earthenware.
as bed-chamber.
in
its
the
Meuse
rows of copper saucepans,
male for the bread, and
as sitting-room
of
high chimney-piece surmounted by
cooking utensils, with

its
regular kitchen
its
dresser furnished with
The next room
serves at once
and dining-room, and even,
Above
are
at need,
some apartments not
general use, and then some vast
granaries with
sloping rafters.
It
was
in a
room on the ground
floor,
with windows
looking to the south, that the painter of Les Foins
(Hay) and of Jeanne d'Arc
first
saw the
light.
The
16
family consisted of the father, a sensible, industrious,
methodical
man
heart
truest
of the
and
woman
mother, a
untiring
devotion
of the
and of
the
Grandfather Lepage, formerly a collector of taxes,
who now found

lived in
home with
common on
his
They
children.
the modest produce of the
fields,
which the Bastiens themselves cultivated, and on the

grandfather's small pension.
At
for
five
years old Jules began to show an aptitude
drawing, and his father was eager
this
dawning
talent.
He
cultivate
himself had a taste for the
imitative arts, employing his leisure

that required a certain
to
manual
skill,
in
light
and
work
to this
he
brought the scrupulous exactness and conscientious

attention which were his ruling qualities.
From
this time, in the winter evenings,
that Jules should
draw with pencil on paper the
various articles in use

jug, the inkstand, etc.
of the eye
he required
upon the
It
was
table
the lamp, the
to this first education
and of the hand that Bastien-Lepage owed
that love of sincerity, that patient seeking for exact-
ness of detail, which were the ruling motives of his

Life ;is
In
an
artist.
thus urging liim to draw every day, the father
had no idea of making his son a painter.
At that
MAN
AS
especially
time,
looked
that
upon
at
as
.I.Y/r. I//77.ST.
Damvillers,
17
was
painting
serious profession.
not
The dream
he cherished, along with the grandfather, was
choose later on one of
to put Jules in a position to
the administrative careers, such as overseer of forests,

or bridges, or
those
of access to
who have been
well trained in
So, as soon as he should be eleven years
drawing.
old,
high-ways, which are always easiest
ho was to leave the
communal
school,
and go to
the College.
This involved great
sacrifice,
for the resources of
the family were low, and in the interval a second boy
was born
but they redoubled their economy, and in
1859 they managed to send Jules to the College of

Verdun.
It
was
at the
the greatest zeal.

dexterity of his
When
holidays
the walls,
drawing class that he worked with
The
hand astonished
his master.
the boy went back to Damvillers for the

lie
drew everywhere
upon his books, upon
upon the doors, and long afterwards traces
of these rough outlines
palings.
correctness of his eye and the
His mother
might be seen on the orchard

carefully preserved books full
of pencil sketches of the little brother

sorts of poses.
2
Emile
in all
18
His habit was
him by
to express
He
a drawing.
any thought that possessed
already attempted to repro-
duce with his pencil, passages that struck him in

reading,
and his
Sacrifice.
on his mind
composition was Abraham's
first
Classical
stories
made more impression
time than the rustic scenes which
at this
met him everywhere in
his wanderings in the open
air.
At
which we
this age, the surroundings in
which custom renders familiar to
live,
and
us, excite neither
our surprise nor our imagination, but they enter our

eyes and our memory, and, without our knowing
become deeply engraven
it,
It is only in later
there.
years that, by comparison and reflection, Ave feel their
powerful charm and their original grace.
In his walks across the
received impressions of country
them
wood
washerwomen wringing out
tree,
while
carried to the workers

;it
wet to the
their fishing tackle
linen by the banks of the Tinte
under a willow
and assimilated
fishers for frogs
meadows with
knees, crossing the
on their shoulders
life,
Gatherers of faggots carrying
like daily food.
their bundles of
Bastien-Lepage
fields,
the
their
loungers sitting
lunch of cheese
is
the village gardens in April
the time of the spring digging,
when the
leafless
AS
trees spread their
MAX AND
ARTIST.
L9
shadows over borders adorned only
by the precocious blossoms of the primrose and the
oown
imperial;
potato
fields,
where
of
fires
dried
stems send up their blue smoke into the red October

evening
all
these details of village
eyes of the child,

his
who
life
entered the
instinctively stored
them up
in
memory.
Literary studies had
for him, while
little interest
on the contrary he had a strong liking for mathematics.
At one time when he was leaving the fourth form
he thought of preparing for the examination for St.
This
Cyr.
is
tially military,
not surprising in a department essen-
whose remarkable men have
been
all
generals or marshals; but this fancy, in which
lie
was led more by imitation of others than by his
own
true calling, soon passed away,
last
years at college his
turned
towards
drawing,
and during his
thoughts were constantly
and when his course of
philosophy came to an end, he made
known
to
his
parents his wish to go to Paris to study painting.
Great was the astonishment in the

villers.
While
recognizing
his
home
son's
at
skill
Damas
draughtsman. Father Bastien persisted in declaring

that
painting was not a career
nothing
certain,
JULES BASTIEX-LEPAGE
20
long and costly apprenticeship, and then ten chances
Let us talk rather
of failure to one of success.
an honourable appointment in the

of
the
where one
state,
every month, with
is
administration
sure to
prospect
of
of
get one's pay
provision
for
one's old age
They held
The
family council.
grandfather
adventure hazardous and shook his
considered the
head; the mother was frightened above

dangers of Paris and the
Jules wishes
it
at last
murmured
to
the
be
by the per-
timidly, "Yet, if
."
!
way was found
of the family,
at
of privation
life
undergone there, but, conquered

sistency of her son, she
all
for settling everything.
who held
a superior
friend
employment in the
Central Postal Administration, advised Jules to go
up
examination for admission into that depart-
for
ment, promising him that on his being received, he
would have him called to Paris, when

arranged for him to study
Arts
in
the hours
at the
that were free
it
could be
Ecole des Beaux

from his postal
They took this advice Bastien passed the

examination, was named supernumerary, and set out
service.
for Paris
He
about the end of 18G7.
divided his time between his postal duties and
AS
his studies
MAN AND
the School.
iii
in the
21
done
Tliis could only be
under greal disadvantages.

position
ARTIST.
The requirements
Post Office made
of his
and
consecutive
serious study very difficult.
By the end
months he was brought
of six
to the
conclusion that this double work was impossible; that
he must choose between the Office and the
He
did not hesitate
School.
he gave up the Post
and, furnished with a letter from
Office,
M. Bouguereau, he
entered the Cabanel studio after having been received

in
the School with the
number
one.
"All beginnings are painful," says Goethe. Bastien-
Lepage had a harsh experience of

burnt his
this.
He
had
ships in leaving the Post Office, and he
found himself alone in Paris with very limited means

of existence.
At Damvillers there was more
The
self-denial.
mother, always valiant, herself went to work in the

fields,
that she might have something to add to the
sum
sent every
month
The Council General
of the
little
an allowance
tli is
together
of,
to
the
young
painter.
Meuse had voted him
I believe, six hundred francs
scarcely
all
furnished him with bed and
board.
But Jules was
endowed with
robust
faith,
22
firm will, a never-failing cheerfulness, and the magical
power of these three enabled him to endure bravely
many
the
trials of
the years of his apprenticeship.
In 1870 he sent his
It is the
picture to the Salon.
It
have just seen this picture
passed unnoticed.
again.
first
portrait
of a
man, quite young,
dressed in a coat of strong green, the whole flooded
with a greenish
It is rather in the
light.
manner
of
Eicard, but the solid construction of the head and
the expression of the face already indicate a painter
who
sees clearly and seeks to enter into the character
of his model.
time later the war broke out.
short
Jules
Bastien enlisted in a company of volunteers, com-
manded by the painter
Castellani,
and did his duty
bravely at the outposts.
One day
in the trenches a shell burst near
him and
sent a clod of hardened earth straight at his chest.
He
was taken
during the
shell fell
first
to the ambulance,
last
month
upon his
where he remained
of the siege, while another
studio,
and there destroyed his
composition, a nymph, nude, her arms clasped
over her blonde head, and bathing her feet in the
waters of a spring.
On
the re-opening of communications he hastened
AS
back to his
MAN AND
ARTIST.
where he arrived,
village,
23
like the
pigeon
in the fable, disabled,

" Trainant
l'aile et tirant le pied."
There he spent the remainder of the year 1871,

health
shattered
recovering his
making long excursions as
in
his native
air,
far as to the Moselle,
and
painting various portraits of relations and friends.
He
did not return to Paris until sometime in the
year 1872.
Then
again.
struggling
the
In order
get
some
but
his
to
life
of the debutant
make both ends meet he
began
tried to
of his drawings into the illustrated journals
manner
wanted by the
of illustrating
editors,
was not what was
who sought above
all
things to
please the ordinary public.
Weary
of the struggle
One day
he began to paint
fans.
manufacturer of antephelic milk (hit
antephelique) asked
him
to
make
a sort of allegorical
picture intended for an advertisement for his Elixir
of Youth.
The
painted a bright
artist,
making
a virtue of necessity,
gay picture, after the manner of
AYatteau's landscapes, with groups of
dressed
in
modern
style
young women
approaching a fountain,
where Cupids were gambolling.
24
The
painting finished,
Bastien explained to the
manufacturer his intention to exhibit
it first
of all in
the Salon.
The perfumer wished

on one condition
on a
for
nothing better, but insisted
above the fountain was to be placed
scroll of all the colours of the
rainbow, the
name
of the cosmetic, and the address of the place where
was
it
sold.
Naturally Bastien refused, and the tradesman, dis-
appointed of his advertisement,
left
him the
picture for
his trouble.
This painting was exhibited in the Salon of 1873,

under the
Au Printemps
title of
placed very high
it
(In Spring)
being
attracted no attention.
Jules was not discouraged, but he was a prey to that

restless
and feverish indecision which commonly besets
beginners.
The teaching
in the school troubled him,
and being a great admirer of Puvis de Chavannes, he
was tempted
to try decorative
His second
Song
picture,
and
La Chanson du Printemps (The
of Spring), exhibited in 1874, is conceived and
executed under this influence.
peasant
a
allegorical painting.
girl
It represents a
young
seated at the edge of a wood, bordered by
meadow which
slopes
down
to
Meusian
village,
whose red-tiled roofs are seen in the distance. The
girl
(ii;\\|.|
By
Jit',
in
/:
.,
I
|
AS
is sitting,
MAN AND
ARTIST.
27
with wide-open eyes, her arm passed through
the bowed handle of a rustic basket strewn with violets,
while from behind her nude

flies'
little
children with butter-
wings and blowing upon pipes, whisper to her the
song of the growing grass, and
tell
her of coming
womanhood.
This light and spring-like picture, half
realistic,
half symbolical, would, perhaps, in spite of its simple

cli
arm, have
left
the public indifferent
if it
had not
been accompanied by another, which suddenly brought

the artist into the light, and was the success of the
Salon of 1874.
During
his last
holiday at
Damvillers, Bastien-
Lepage had conceived the idea of painting the portrait

of his grandfather, in the
which the old
man
open
air, in
little
garden
loved to cultivate.
The grandfather was represented

chair, holding
the
seated in a garden
on his knees his horn snuff-box and his
handkerchief of blue cotton.

out well detached from the
His
striking face stood
background of trees
the
black velvet cap sloping jauntily towards his ear gave

effect
the shrewd
to
with
twinkled
retrousse
Socratic
face;
blue
eyes
humour; the nose was broad
and
his
the white forked beard spread itself over
an ancient vest of the colour of dead leaves
the
28
hands, painted like
life,
were crossed upon the grey
trousers.
Before this picture,
so
true,
marvellous intensity of familiar

delighted, and the
name
before, figured the next

articles
on the Salon.
so
life,
frank,
the public stood
of Bastien-Lepage,
day in the
of such
first
unknown
place in the
II.
was in front of
IT
Having looked
Jules.
name
this picture that I first
of the painter, I
in
my
catalogue for the
was delighted to find that
he was from the Meuse, and born at that same

villers
where I had once
The heavy
When
artists.
a
soil of
it
met
Dam-
lived.
our department
has produced one
not fruitful in
is
it
takes a rest for
lew centuries.
Since Ligier Richier, the celebrated sculptor, born

at the
end of the fifteenth century, the Meuse could
only claim credit for the painter Yard
and houses
rator of churches
clever deco-
in the time of
Duke
Stanislas; so I was quite proud to find that Bastien-
Lepage was a fellow countryman
moments
later a
of mine.
mutual friend introduced us
few
to each
other.
I saw before
fair,
me
youngman,
and muscular
his
pale
plainly dressed, small,

face,
with
its
square
30
determined brow, short nose, and spiritual
lips, scarcely
covered with a blond moustache, was lighted up by two

clear blue eyes
loyalty
whose straight and piercing look
and indomitable energy.
told of
There was roguish-
ness as well as manliness in that mobile face with

flattened features,
with signs
its
and a certain cool audacity alternated
of sensitiveness
and sparkling fun and
gaiety.
Remembrances
of our native province, our
love of the country
and of
life
in the open
common
air,
soon
established kindly relations between us, and after two

or three meetings
we had entered upon
a close friend-
ship.
The
portrait of the grandfather
a third medal,
had won
for
him
and had ensured him a place in the
sunshine.
It
was not yet a money success, but
certain degree of
fame
village with his heart
it
was a
he might go back to his
at rest, his
State had just bought his picture,
head high.
The
La Chanson du
Printemps (The Hong of Spring), and orders were

I
x'ginning to
come
in.
In 1875 Rastien-Lepage reappeared in the Salon

with
La Communiante (The Communicant) and
portrait of
M. Simon Hayem, two
the
excellent works
The Communicant.
By
Jules Bastien-Lepage,
MAN AND
is
each in
gave,
which
ABTIST.
new mark
way, a
its
33
of
his
originality.
The
portrait of
world
the
of
M. Hayem was
most
were
artists
best liked by
struck
men
by La
Comnmniante.
This young
simple awkward bearing, as she
girl's
stands out from a creamy background, with

stiffness of
her starched white
ease
white
the
in
It
painting.
naively opening
veil,
and crossing her
ber pure hazel eyes,
gloves,
is
the
all
fingers,
ill
at
marvel of truthful
reminds one of the manner of Memling
and of Clouet, though with quite a modern feeling.

interesting, as being the first of those small,
It is
characteristic
lifelike
portraits, in a
style
at
may be reckoned
broad
and conscientious, which
among
the most perfect of this painter's works.
At
the
Bastien
Rome.
from
time
of
joined
The
the
in
these
successes
in
the
Salon,
the competition for the Prix de
subject
New
once
chosen for
Testament
1875 was taken
L'Annonciation
aux
Bergers (The Annunciation to the Shepherds).

I
remember
as
it'
il
were yesterday
that
July
morning when the gates of the Palais des Beaux

Arts were opened, and the crowd of eager inquirers
rushed into the hall of the competition.

3
34
After
few minutes Bastien's picture was sur-
rounded,
and a buzz of approval arose from the
groups of young people gathered round that work, so

real,
conceived and executed
so strongly
that
the
other nine canvases disappeared as in a mist.
The
in a
artist
had understood and treated the subject
manner
utterly different from the usual style of
the Academy.
was familiar and touching,
It
page of the Bible.

surprised the
the open air
The
shepherds
of
visit
angel had
the
by their
sleeping
like
fire
in
the oldest of them was kneeling before
the apparition, and prostrated himself in adoration
the youngest was gazing with half-closed eyes, and

his open lips
and hands, with
fingers apart, expressed
astonishment and admiration.

figure,
with
childlike
almost
showing with outstretched
The
angel, a graceful
feminine
arm
to
head,
the
was
shepherds,
Bethlehem in the distance surrounded by
a miracu-
lous halo.
This picture, which has both the charm of poetic

legend and a manly grip of real
with
uncommon
grace
life,
and vigour
was executed
its
very faults
contributed to the realization of the effect aimed
Most
of
those
who
saw this work of
declared that he would carry
oil"
at.
Lepage
the Prix de Borne
AS
MAN AND
A11T1ST.
35
yet the jury decided otherwise.
with a high hand;
was an older and more correct competitor who
It
was sent to the Villa Medicis at the cost of the

Slate.
moment Bastien-Lepage was troubled and

Not that he felt himdiscouraged by this decision.
For
art,
but he
by
his
knew
many
that
success.
Rome and
towards
attracted
strongly
self
Among
people judge of an artist

people
the
would have been considered as an
able
to
had undergone so
tain
him
many
at Paris.
recognition
not being
who
privations in order to main-
may
forget this
gather from this fragment
my business
but my art I
learned
that
all,
That he did not soon
of a letter to a friend
forget
his
in
to his relations,
satisfaction
un merited check, we
" I
official
and he regretted, above
give this
down
own family the Prix de Rome
province and in his
of his talent,
Italian
in
Paris,
shall
did not learn there.
not
I
should be sorry to undervalue the high qualities and

tin
Bui
devotion of the masters

is it
my
fault if I
who
have found in their studio the
only doubts that have tormented

to
Paris
direct the school.
knew nothing
at
me?
all,
but
When
I
I came
had never
dreamed of that heap of formulas they pervert one
36
In the school I have drawn gods and goddesses,
with.
Greeks and Romans, that I knew nothing about, that

I did not understand, and even laughed
say
to
myself that
to
wonder sometimes now

this education.
anything has resulted from
if
not
did
portrait
again for the Prix de
was
consider
of
himself
beaten.
Rome
M. Wallon, he went
competition.
own sake than
less for his
to his family
any
art
following year, at the same time that he was
exhibiting his
it
might be high
this
."
.
However, he
The
I used
at.
and
friends.
in
This time
to give a satisfaction
He
did not enter with
real feeling into this competition, the subject for
which was
Priam suppliant Achille de
corps de son
restore to
picture,
fils
rendre
le
Hector (Priam begging Achilles
to
him the body
lui
This
of his son Hector).
though a vigorous composition,
tells
almost
nothing of the deep and poignant emotion of this

episode of the Iliad.
Once more he
he did not take
with
failed to gain the prize, but this time

it
much
to heart.
more absorbing prospects
He
his
was occupied
last
visit
Damvillers had bent his mind toward another
Whatever he might
not
been without
ideal.
say, his studies in the school
their
use
to
him.
to
had
They had
AS
MAN AND
him the
developed in
ARTIST.
critical
37
His repug-
faculty.
nance to factitious and conventional art had driven
more
with
liim
force
to
the
and
exact
attentive
observation of nature.
At Paris he had learned
The Meuse
better.
low
country, so
compare, and to see

little heroic,
with
its
limited horizons, its level plains, had
its
hills,
to
appeared to him suddenly more attractive and more
worthy of interest than the heroes of Greece and Borne.
Our labourers driving the plough across the

our
women
peasant
with their
large
field
liquid
eyes,
prominent jaws, and widely opening mouths;

vine-dressers, their backs
the hoe,
was
;i
curved with the labour of
had revealed themselves
much more
work
attractive
our
him
to
than those of the
as models
atelier.
It
for a great artist to bring out the poetry
pervading the village folk and their belongings and

to give
line
it
real existence, as it were,
and colour.
of the
mown
To
by means of
represent the intoxicating odour
grass, the heat of the
August sun on
the ripe corn, the life of the village street; to bring

into idiot' the
men and women who have
their joys
and sorrows there; to show the slow movement of

thought, the anxieties about daily bread on faces witli
irregular
and even vulgar features;
this is
human
38
art,
and consequently high
Dutch painters
while
Bastien,
did,
art.
This
is
what the
and they created masterpieces.
lounging
among
the
orchards
of
Damvillers and the woods of Reville, resolved that
he would do as they had done, that he would paint

the peasants of the Meuse.
The
of
list
studies
begun or completed
at
this
time shows us the progress of this dominant idea
La Paysanne au Repos (The Peasant Woman Reposing), La Prairie de Damvillers (The Meadow at Damthe two sketches for the picture Les Foins
villers),
(The Hay), Les Jardins au Print emps (Gardens

Spring),
(Dawn)
It
in
Les Foins Murs (Ripe Grasses), L'Aurore
all
these canvases bear the date of 1876.
was in the autumn of the same year that we
carried
out
long-talked-of
plan
for
making an
excursion together on foot into the Argonne.

to join
him
Thanks
in September at Damvillers.
to him, I
saw with a very
different feeling
the town that formerly I thought so dull.
and hospitably received in the house

the great
I went
square, I
Cordially
at the corner of
made the acquaintance
of the
father, with his calm, thoughtful face; of the grandfather, so cheerful in spite of his eighty years; of the
mother, so
full of life, so
devoted, the best mother that
AS
MAN AND
one could wish for an
and tender union

I
his
artist.
set out along
painter's
39
saw what a strong
members
existed between the
family whose idol and
We
ABTIST.
whose pride was Jules.
with one of
For
young brother.
of
my old
friends and the
week we walked with
our bags on our backs through the forest country of the
La
Argonne, going through woods from Varennes to

Chalade, and from Islettes to Beaulieu.
The weather
was rainy and unpleasant enough, but we were none the

less
gay for that, never winking when the rain came
down, visiting the
glass-works,
admiring the
deep
gorges in the forests, the solitary pools in the midst

of the woods, the miles of green
at
and misty avenues
the foot of the hills.
Jules Bastien was always the leader.

arrived at our resting-place in
of walking in the rain,
an evening,
When
Ave
after a day
he almost deafened us with
scraps of cafi -concert songs, with
which his memory
was stored.
I seem
voice, clear
still
to
hear in the dripping night that
and vibrating, now
As we went along he
told
silent for ever.
me
of his plans for the
future.
Ho wanted
in
series of
to tell the
whole story of country
large pictures:
life
hay-making, harvest,
40
young
seed-time, the lovers, the burial of a
He
also
wanted to paint a peasant woman as Jeanne
moment when
the
d'Arc, at
mission
girl.
the idea of her divine
taking possession of her brain
is
Christ in the
then, a
Tomb.
Together we made a plan for publishing a series of

compositions
twelve
Months
Les Mois
Kustiques
in the Country), for which he
was
(The
to furnish
the drawings and I the text.
From
time to time we stopped at the opening of a
and Jules would
wood
or at the entrance of a village,
make
a hasty sketch, little thinking that the wild
and
simple peasants of the Argonne would take us for
Germans
surreptitiously
at a Pilgrimage,
we had nearly been taken as
it
amused us
for a
long time.
After eight days of this vagabond

at
life
Saint Mihiel, where Bastien wished
we separated
to
group of statues of the sepulchre, the chef
see the
cVocuvre of
Ligier liichier, before beginning his Christ in the
Shortly
in a letter
tt
spies.
The remembrance
I have told this story elsewhere.*

of
of their roads
At Saint Rouin, while we were looking
and passes.
on
making notes
Tomb.
onwards he gave an account of this
to his friend
See
La Chanson
Baude, the engraver:

dujardinier
in
Sous Bois.
visit
AS
"
\<
Our
too short
interesting,
-it
MAN AND
ARTIST.
41
walkthrough theArgonne
and ended with a
visit
lias
been
to the grand
You
chef <r<inrre of Ligier Richier at Saint Mihiel.
must see that some day.
I have seen nothing
France ought to know better
sculpture so touching.
and to be prouder of that great Lorraine

will
He
to me.
six
weeks
the
01
first
time, and
it
We
is
carried off
was a rude shock
for a family
well.
were too young to lose such a good friend,"
he wrote to
in
Damvillers again
Death entered the house
where each loved the other so

"
at
who was suddenly
lost his father,
pulmonary congestion.
by
when you
."
had scarcely been
when he
You
artist.
see a photograph of this masterpiece
come
me
"in
spite of all the courage one can
ustor. the void, the frightful void is so great, that
sometimes in despair.
remains
M. Victor Klotz), and what a remembrance

the purest that is possible;
Be If- abnegation
is
personified;
to be done ?
with love for those

to us.
one
..."
"... Happily remembrance
What
in
We
he
(letter
it is
was goodness and
he loved us so
must
to
try to
who remain, and who
always keeping in mind him
who
fill
the void
are attached
is
working much to drive away the fixed idea."
gone, and
42
And
at a
indeed he did work furiously
Job that remains unfinished, and
at Damvillers,
at Paris at the
which was exhibited in
full-length portrait of a lady,
the Salon of 1877.
He
had
in the
left
the
Eue Cherche Midi and had
Impasse du Maine, where his studio and his
apartment occupied one

of a
settled
floor of a building, at the
end
narrow neglected garden, whose only ornaments
were an apricot tree and some
His brother Emile, who
lilac
bushes.
just then
came
to
an end
of his study of architecture in the school, lived with
him.
His
studio was very large, and was simply furnished
with an old divan, a few stools, and a table covered
with books and sketches.

the painter's
own
It
studies
was decorated only with

and a few hangings of
Japanese material.
I used to go there every morning at this time to
for
my
sit
portrait.
I used to arrive about eight o'clock, to find Jules

already
up,
but with
his
eyes
only
half
awake,
swallowing two raw eggs, to give himself tone, as he
He
already complained
lived by rule.
We
of
stomach trouble, and
used to smoke a cigarette, and then
<*
-hi
-J--^-''-
-i'-
The IKmii
d.
By Jules Bastien- Lepage.
t-ir-. -r B
...J7
MAN AND
AS
began
be
He
work.
fco
painted
45
with
feverish
and with a certainty of band quite astonish-
rapidity,
Sometimes he would
ing.
ARTIST.
cigarette,
up and
roll
would closely examine the face of his model,
and then, after

he would
get
stop,
sit
minutes of
five
silent contemplation,
down again with the
vivacity of a
monkey
and begin to paint furiously.
The
portrait,
sketched
during the
in
when the
January, was almost finished
began to put
on
snows of
apricot tree
covering of white flowers in
its
April.
Immediately after the opening of the Salon, Bastien

packed up his baggage and
fled
prepare for his great picture
Les Foins (The Hay-
field),
which occupied him
all
the
to
Damvillers to
summer
of 1877,
me news from time to time.

"July.
I shall not say much about my work
the
subject is not yet sufficiently sketched in.
What I
can tell you is that I am going to give myself up to a
and of which he gave
debauch in pearly tones: half-dry hay and flowering

grasses
and
this in the sunshine, looking like a pale
yellow tissue with silver threads running through

'
The clumps
of trees
and in the meadow
on the banks of the stream

stand out strongly with a
will
rather Japanese effect.
it.
46
" 15th August.
Your verses are just
should like to paint.
They
heat of the meadow.
...
smell of the hay and the
my
If
as yours I shall be content.

is sitting
broken and weary.

of a peasant
My
young peasant
on his back,
full sun,
and
the haymakers
I have had hard work
work again.
first
her, flat
with his hands closed
beyond, in the meadow, in the
my
her attitude altogether
Behind
is asleep,
are beginning to
I think she will give the true idea
woman.
her companion
up
hay smells as well
with her arms apart, her face hot and red
her fixed eyes seeing nothing
to set
the picture I
determined to keep
ideas, being
simply to the true aspect of a bit of nature.
Nothing
of the usual willow arrangement, with its branches
drooping over the heads of the people to frame the
Nothing of that
scene.
against the half-dry hay.
sort.
My
There
is
people stand out
a little tree in one
corner of the picture to show that other trees are

near,
where the
The whole tone

green. ..."
" September.
men
are gone to rest in the shade.
of the picture will be a light grey
Why
You would have
seen
Lenoir, the sculptor,

liked
it.
The country
didn't
you come, lazy fellow
my Hay before it was finished.

my neighbour in the Impasse,
people say
it
is alive.
I have
AS
little
more than
going
to
study
sceptic.
MAN AND
ARTIST.
47
background to
the
harness myself to the Reapers, and to a nude
of
Diogenes
the
or
cynic,
..."
great success,
though
In the hall where
which
surrounded
it
it
was placed, among the pictures

this
it,
effect of a large
The meadow,
gave
picture
an extraIt
open window.
summer
sky, flecked with
The young haymaker
clouds.
air.
mown, went hack bathed with
half
sunshine, under a
had
It
was wannly discussed.
ordinary sensation of light and of the open
had the
the
rather,
Les Foins was sent to the Salon in 1878.

a
am
finish.
light
sitting drooping in
the heat, intoxicated with the smell of the hay, her
eyes fixed, her limbs relaxed, her
There was nothing of the conven-
wonderfully real.
tional
peasant
mouth open, was
whose hands look
as
never touched a tool, hut a veritable
if
they had
countrywoman
accustomed from childhood to outdoor work.

felt
that
breathe a
One
she was weary with fatigue, and glad to
moment
at
her ease, after a morning of
hard work in the sun.
This picture of
bo
life
in the fields, so carefully studied,
powerfully rendered, had a considerable influence
on the painting of the day.
From
the time of this
48
many
exhibition
many young
especially,
threw themselves with enthusiasm into the
painters,
foreign artists
new way opened out by Bastien-Lepage,

intention on his part, the painter
and, without
of the
peasants became the head of a school.
Meusian
III.
BASTIEN did
not allow himself to be spoiled
by success, but continued
liis life
of assiduous
labour and conscientious research.

vided his time between Paris
He
di-
and Damvillers, giving
the larger part to his village.
We
have a long
Portraits of
is;').
of
M. de Tinan,
of
Emile Bastien,
of his
works done in 1878 and
M. and Mme. Victor Klotz and
MM.
their children, of
that
list
de Gosselin, of M. A. Lenoir,
of the publisher
of
Saison d'Octobre,
George Charpentier,
Sarah Bernhardt, and

Eecolte des
or,
The Potato Harvest) which
companion picture
to
graver key, with
Les Foins (Hay).
warm
is
de
the
This was in
yet sober colours, and ;m
exquisite savour of the country in the late

it
lastly
Pommes
terre (October, or
of
was powerfully executed and
full
summer
of health
and
serenity.
The
portrait of
Sarah Bernhardt and The Potato

4
50
Harvest, less discussed than
The Hay, made
a deep
impression on the mass of the public.
Dating from
artistic
His
and monetary, was

care
first
was
Bastien's
time,
this
success,
both
secure.
to let his friends at Damvillers
join in his good fortune.
They had been with him

should
share his pleasure, and he brought them
now
to Paris in the
summer
return to them, in
what
of
He
devotion.
He
was happy
kind attentions, a
to
little
for
so
much
affectionate
grateful
to
them
for
them
was
him
of 1879.
all sorts of
he owed
believed in
in his difficulties, they
having
in his time of difficulty as a beginner,
and he experienced a tender pride in being able
to
show them that they had not been mistaken.
When
I
lie
mother
lis
received his
to a large
want
Mama
mother,
little
to
important gains he took
shop and had

"
f lightened
cried he.
the poor
at the sight of black
that could stand upright of
itself,
"she would never wear
that."
that
silks for dresses
Show some more;'

choose the best." And
spread out before her.

" I
first
in
satin
vain protested
She was obliged
to give way.
He
liois
took his grandfather through the avenues of the
and the principal boulevards, expecting thai
lit
A~-
Sakaii Bernhardt.
By J tiles
Bastien-Lepage.
MAN AND
AS
would be delighted
cllmts
but
in litis
The
utterly.
failed
ARTIST.
53
direction his zealous
man remained
old
different to the splendours of Parisian
the scenery in the theatres.
and
luxury and to
At the opera he yawned
openly, declaring that all this

ing,
in-
commotion was deafen-
went hack to Damvillers determined that
lie
they should never take
him away
again.
A iter having seen his people into the train for

their return,
he set out for England, where he painted
the Prince of Wales.
Decorated in the following July, he hastened to

Damvillers to show his red ribhon to his friends, and
also to go
He
and
on with the work he loved best.
had managed to arrange a studio in the spacious
lofty granaries of the paternal house,
and there
he worked hard.
He
hoped
deferred,
of
painting
meditated
much on
spoken of
it.
\\\> idea
at
was
Domremy
first
Jeanne
this subject,
to paint
at the
his
to realize
at last
Jeanne
dream, so long
d'Arc.
He
had
and we have often
in the little orchard
moment when
she hears, for the
time, the mysterious voices sounding in her ears
the call to deliver her country.
To
give
more precision
to the scene, Bastien wished
54:
to
through the branches of
show,
" blessed saints,"
the
the
trees,
whose voices encouraged the heroic
shepherdess.
In
this I differed
from him.
I maintained that he
ought to suppress these fantastic apparitions, and

that the expression of Jeanne's face alone
should
explain to the spectator the emotion caused by the

hallucination to which she was a prey.
him
of
sleep-walking
the
doctor and the
scene
the terrible things that dilate
Macbeth
in
chamber- woman, I
the
I reminded
said,
the
do not see
pupils
Lady
of
Macbeth, but from her face and gestures they know

that there
is
something
terrible
the effect
is
only
the greater, because, after haying perceived this, the
imagination of the spectator increases
Suppress
it.
your phantoms and your picture will gain in sincerity
and dramatic
intensity.
But Jules held
to the personification of the voices,
and our discussions ended without either the one or

the other being convinced.
1
ion
my
Nevertheless,
objec-
had impressed him, and he wanted to show his
work to his friends before
"Come,"
lie
September, " F.
wants
<n
wrote
is
it
to
was quite
me, about
quite disposed to
conio to Damvillers.
finished.
15th
the
come
of
he really
Everything
will go
Joan of Abc Listening io mi. Voices.
By
Jules Bust icit-Li page.
MAN AND
AS
You
beautifully.
nit'
no harm.
picture of .Jeanne d'Arc
work
and getting on well;
(letter to
My
found
head
will
for
Ch. Baude)
picture
is
getting
except the voices,
all,
some parts are begun.
Bketched, and
;u is
you would be less surprised.

on.
)
I
."
.
you knew how
It'
my
will see
57
and somebody coming from
well advanced,
do
ABTIST.
my Jeanne
d'Arc,
is
I think I have
and everybody
thinks she expresses well the resolution to set out,

while keeping the charming simplicity of the peasant.
very chaste and very
I think the attitude is
Also,
sweet, as
it
represent
to leave
ought to be in the figure that I want to

.
but
if
am
you the pleasure of surprise and of the
impression of the picture
and you
you soon, I prefer
to see
will
you
will
judge of
it
first
better,
be able to say better what you think of
."
it.
Jeanne d'Arc appeared in the Salon of 1880, with

ili
portrait of
M. Andrieux.
It did not produce all
The
the effect that Jules expected.

enthusiastic
The
tors.
and
of
admirers,
attacked
critics
perspective;
represented
but
then,
by three
also
first
as
picture
passionate
the
had
its
detrac-
want of
air
had foreseen, the
symbolical
personages,
too slightly indicated to be understood,
and yet too
voiceSi
58
But the
precise for apparitions.
public did not do
justice to the admirable figure of Jeanne, standing,
motionless, quivering, her eyes dilated by the vision,
her
left
hand extended, and mechanically fingering the
leaves of a shrub growing near.
Never had Bastien-Lepage created
than this Lorraine shepherdess, so
poetically true
human,
pure, so
more
a figure
so profoundly absorbed in her heroic
ecstasy.
The
and
rapid
master had
brilliant
ruffled the
made him pay
success
of
the
amour propre of many
young
;
they
for these precocious smiles of glory
He
undervaluing his new work.
medal of honour would be given

this distinction
was given
to
had hoped that the

to his
an
whose work had neither the
by
Jeanne d'Arc
artist of talent,
originality,
nor
but
the
qualities of execution, nor the importance of Bastion's
He
picture.
London
felt this injustice
there
the
strongly and went to
reception
and appreciation of
English artists and amateurs consoled him a

this
now
mortification.
The two
years
vidimus work
of
that
.illant
voir
different
son
were
followed
kinds
(Ripe Corn), the London Docks,
Laysan
little for
champ
'
fruitful
in
Les Bles Murs
The Thames, Le
le
dimanche (The
max AM)
AS
Peasant Going to
Look
the portraits of
of Mdlle.
Damain,
.v.
on Sunday), La
at his Field
(The
Petite Fille allant a l'ecole
School)
Airnsr.
M. and
little
Girl
Going
to
Mme. Goudchaux,
of
of Albert Wolff,
and of Mine.
\Y..
La Marcbande do Flours (The Flower Girl); last of

the two great pictures
all,
Le Mendiant (The
Beggar),
and Pere Jacques, exhibited in the Salon in 1881
and 1882.
II is
stay in
London and
the reading of Shakspeare
had inspired him with the idea of painting one of the

heroines of the great poet, and in 1881 he went hack
Death
to Damvillers full of a project for painting the

of Ophelia.
II
I have been painting
hard"
(letter to
Ch. Baude,
August, 1881), "for I want to go away and travel for
At the end
two or three weeks.

will
come and
That
see us.
is
of
settled, is
Shooting, amusements, friendship.

I have painted a
all
The Cuvier
Ophelia.
Bomething as a contrast to
it
return
a Lessive
(The
much
time.
the detail requires
I think
at a little
Besides I have begun and already advanced

picture of
not
it
my
Since
haymaker and worked
picture of an interior
Washing Kitchen)
September you
will be well
my Mendiant
largo
to
do
(Beggar).
It is to be a really touching Ophelia, as heartrending

as
it*
one actually saw her.
60
"
she
The poor
doing, but her face shows traces of sorrow and
is
of madness.
She
is
close to the edge of the water
leaning against a willow

left
by her
last
song
only by a branch, she

is
is
dressed in a
upon her
is
In a moment she
and thousands of hemlock

sky
is
with
trees,
the stream
will
be in
it.
her pockets are
full
a river-side landscape.
flowering grasses,
tall
flowers, like stars in the
and in the higher part of the picture, a wooded
slope
and the evening sun shining through birches
and hazel bushes
that
is
the scene
This picture was never finished.
and flowers were rendered as the

the
greenish blue bodice, and
little
and behind her
One bank under
Supported
slipping unawares
a white skirt with large folds
of flowers,
the smile
lips,
in her eyes, tears
quite close to her.
She
knows what
distracted girl no longer
face
."
.
The landscape
artist wished,
but
and the costume of Ophelia recalled his
Jeanne d'Arc too much.

Bastien-Lepage no doubt saw
this,
and
for
this
reason put the picture on one side to return to his

)H';ls;ll)tS.
The more he become master

more the
thorough
rustic
of his
work haunted him.
countryman.
He
brush,
was
the
still
Although he had now
a
at
The
By Jules
13Et;<;.u:.
JBastien-Lepage.
MAX AND
AS
ARTIST.
intervals the refinements of elegance
atelier in
modest
in the Quartier
he
although
worldliness;
of
had
63
and
exchanged
Maine
the Impasse du
bursts
little
the
house
for a
Monceau, the world soon wearied
liim,
and be was glad to go back to his village.
This six weeks' absence, of which he speaks
Baude, was spent
letter to his friend
to Venice,
and in Switzerland.
half delighted,
an excursion
in
He
his
in
came back only
and brought back only
few unim-
portant sketches.
and the splendours of Venetian
Italy
art
had
left
liim cold.
In this world of history and mythology he
was not
borne
at
Meusian
bis
He
forests.
During his rapid

the
painting
Madame
visits
of
visits to
various
adulation
of him.
lavished
notably
that
of
and the compulsory tax of
soirees occupied
little
Paris in 1881 and 1882,
portraits,
Juliette Drouet,
and
saw but
sickened for his meadows and
him almost
But these
upon him
in
entirely.
We
and the
successes,
Parisian drawings
rooms, did not change him.
He
was
to old ties;
still
the loyal, joyous comrade, faithful
very good, very simple; happy as
when he found himself
We
in a circle of
intimate
child
friends.
were both members and even founders of an
64
Alsace-Lorraine
dinner,
was always given
in
the Diner
summer
de l'Est, which
One
in the country.
of
the last meetings at which he was present, took place

at the
end of May, 1881.
hoat had heen engaged, which was to take the
diners to the bridge at Suresnes, and to bring
When we
hack at night.
stage, a
arrived
at
the landing-
Mind man was standing by the
attended by a young
girl,
who held
them
footbridge,
out her sebilla to
the passers-by.
"
Come, gentlemen
'
your pockets
passed over
gaily
first,
all
of you, put your hands in
commanded
Bastien, and he
preaching by example.
And
hundred guests of the Diner de
eighty, or a
the
l'Est,
passed one after another over the footbridge, each one

leaving in the child's sebilla a coin, large or small.
When we
look at
to
amazed
were on the deck, Bastien turned round

the
at this
blind
man and
his girl,
who were
unexpected windfall, and were slowly
counting their money.

"
What
a lovely group ? " he said to me.
should like to paint that child
While waiting
de Boulogne.
flower.
The
for
The
"
How
"
!
dinner we walked in the Bois

acacias
and hawthorns were
in
lawns, newly shorn, gave out a perfume
AS
mown
of
ARTIST.
65
Jules, joyfully drawing in this air
grass.
laughed
country odours,
impregnated with
happy
MAN AND
like
child.
At that moment
all
His
was going well with him.
Mendiant had had a great success at the Salon; his

lasl
visit
head was
to
England had heen very prosperous
full
of fine projects for
good to be alive
;i
Mounted on the prow
Bang, with his full voice, the
The
his
is
he exclaimed, as he played with
way back he gave himself up
roguish fun.
"It
pictures.
he had plucked from the bushes.
flower
tli.'
"
!
to
all
On
sorts of
of the boat he
Chant du Depart.
vibrating tones resounded powerfully between
the two sleeping river banks
twinkling with innumerable
stars.
the sky was splendid,
From
time Bastien lighted a rocket and sent
it
time to
up over-
haul, shouting a loud hurrah!
The
fusee
ing (low
11
mounted slowly into the
many-coloured sparks, then
and sank in the dark water.

of the short
him
to live.
and
Alas
brilliant years
it
that
night, showerfell
suddenly
was the image

remained for
66
IV.
ON
the death of Gambetta, January
1,
1883,
Bastien was commissioned to make a design
for the funeral car in
was
conveyed to Pere Lachaise
to be
week
which the great orator
room
in the little
at
he spent a
Yille d'Avray, painting
the picture representing the statesman on his death-
The
bed.
cold
work scarcely
Damvillers,
was extreme
finished,
hoped
finish
to
had began of L'Amour au
picture he
His native
air,
time, and, his
he went away, feeling
he
where
at this
the simple
life,
the
ill,
to
great
Village.
and his mother's
loving care restored him, and he began to work again
with his usual eagerness.

Muffled in a
that
covered
models pose
ruary,
in
'
the
warm
jacket
him down
for
him
little
to
and a travelling cloak

the feet, he
made
his
in the piercing days of Feb-
garden where he had already
painted the portrait of his grandfather.
In March
AS MAN AM) ARTIST.

the work was well advanced, and
go and see
Si
at
it
I left
Ion.
Damvillers before
67
was sent
it
me
invited
lie
to
to the
Verdun on a freezing afternoon, ac-
companied by the old friend who had walked with

as
through the Argonne, and we were set down at
Oar hosts were awaiting
Damvillers at night-fall.
us
on the doorstep
the
grandfather,
always the
same, with his Greek cap and white beard, and his
Socratic lace; the painter
and the
mother, with
little
smiles and outstretched hands.
Around them Basse the
and Golo and
spaniel,
Barbeau were bounding and barking joyfully to give

u> a welcome.
The next morning,

studio to
see
early,
L'Amour au
we went
up
to
which was
Village,
the
to go
to Paris that day.
The
subject of this picture is well
known
it
is
one of the most real and the most original that the
artist
has painted: the daylight
gate of a village
young
is
-irl,
what ho
is
waning;
garden, a lad of twenty,
been binding sheaves, and

Leather,
is
still
who has
wears his leggings of
talking, leaning against a fence,
who turns her back

saying to her
awkward manner
of
may
at the
with a
to the spectator;
be guessed from his
twisting his
stiff
fingers,
and
68
also
from the attentive but embarrassed
young
One
girl.
that
feels
air
of the
they are not
saying
much, but that love exhales from every word, so

to
difficult
Around them summer spreads
speak.
The
the robust verdure of the country.
stand lightly
silhouetted
against
background of
kitchen herbs, gently sloping up to

the village,
soft
and misty twilight
bathed in a subdued
The young
painted.
the houses
whose brown roofs and pointed
come against the

this,
fruit trees
light,
of
spire
All
sky.
marvellously
is
her short plaits falling
girl,
over her shoulders, her neck bent, the form of her

back, so young, so delicate,
the face
of the
masterly.
manly
of
an exquisite
young harvester,
ingenuously in love,
treatment
is
the
There
is
in
the
the
bust,
this
picture
poetry, which is strengthening
like the
energetic,
so
charming in expression
hands,
is
figure
so
the
dress,
true
is
and
and refreshing,
odour of ripe corn.
Bastien was glad to have completed this
difficult
work, and his satisfaction enabled him to bear with

cheerfulness the pains in his loins, and the digestive
troubles
which
were
becoming
more
and
more
frequent.
It
was long since I had seen him so gay and unre-
AS
ARTIST.
at
Dam-
was the pendant to the walk through the
The
Argonne.
sullen sky, continually blotted out by
chilling showers, allowed us few

air
69
This happy holiday-week spent
served.
villers
MAN AND
walks in
the open
but every morning we went up to the studio.
Jules dismissed the
made us pose
copper, he
who was
sweep,
sitting for a
he had on hand, and, taking a sheet of
picture that
me now
plate before
the whole
sents
little
an etching.
for
I have this
did not bite well.
it
family,
It repre-
including the grandfather,
milking a circle round our friend F., who, standing up

;ind
very grave,
is
reciting one
While I look
tallies.
at
merry laughter which
it,
of
La
Fontaine's
I seem to hear again the

the studio, alternating
filled
with the rattling of the hail against the windows.
In the evening, after supper, we placed ourselves

round
at the
table,
Jules, throwing
to
Diable or Nain rouge.
at
away his best
grandfather win
the
let
and played
cards, always
and when
genarian, quite proud of his success,

stakes,
the
took up
octo-
the
he would pat him on the shoulder, and cry
out, with
lucky
managed
man
a
!
merry twinkle of the

he
will
ruin us
all
eye,
"
"Ha! what
and the laughter
began again.
We
did not go to bed
till
well
on into the night,
70
after
having roused the
had dozed
of Victor
off in
the kitchen while copying a portrait
Hugo.
In the intervals
us to
who
domestic, Felix,
little
Bastien-Lepage took
of sunshine,
He
visit " his fields."
had
a peasant's love for
the land, and he employed his gains in adding to the

paternal domains.
situated
in
He
had just bought an orchard
the old moat of
the town, which had
belonged to an unfrocked priest.
He
intended to
build a chalet there, where his friends, painters or

poets,
might come and
dream
at their ease.
live
He
in
holidays and
their
explained to us with the
delight of a child, his plans for the future.
When,
with his portraits, he should have gained an inde-
pendent fortune, he would execute at his ease and in

freedom, the grand rustic pictures that he dreamed
of,
and among others, that burial of a young
girl, for
village
which he had already made many notes and
sketched the principal details.
long walk, and
it
We
only took one
was in those woods of Reville which
form the background of his landscape, Ripe Corn.
The weather had remained
cold,
and there were
patches of snow on the backs of the grey

the sun shone sometimes.
hills,
still
though
Except a few downy buds
on the willows, the woods were without verdure
but
Fatheb Jacques, the Woodman.

By Jules Bastien-Lepage.
AS
MAN AND
ABTIST.
73
had a beautiful brown colour
the ploughed fields
tbe
of the beeches began to have
larks sang; the tops
that reddish hue, which indicates the rising of the

" Look," said Bastien to me,
sap, the swelling buds.
when we were
in the forest, "
my
Wood-cutter in the
last
Salon was reproached with want of
here
we
and the trees are
are in a wood,
leaves, yet look
how
little
of the perspective of
air.
It is the
looked
at
sitting.
see things
my
criticism
you
sit
There
is
open
who have never

crouching down or
of people
down
Sitting,
have more objects
without
still
pictures done in the
to paint,
quite differently from
them standing.
Well,
and prejudice in that criticism
landscape, except
When
the figure stands out from
the undergrowth of trees and bushes.

great deal of routine
air.
the
you naturally
way you
see
you see more sky and you

houses, or living beings
trees,
standing out sharply in silhouette against the sky,
which gives the illusion of a greater distance and

a
wider atmosphere.
But
it is
we generally see a landscape.
not in this way that
We
look at
ing,
and then the
arc
nearest to us, instead of being
against the sky,
upon the
fields,
objects,
it
stand-
animate or inanimate, that
are silhouetted
grey or green.
seen in profile
upon the
They stand
trees, or
out with
74.
and sometimes mix with the back-
clearness,
less
ground, which then, instead of going away, seems
We
need to renew the education
to
come forward.
of
our eye, by looking with sincerity upon tilings
as they are in nature, instead of holding as absolute
truths the theories and conventions of the school and
the studio."
All
the
afternoon
friendly talking
The
paths.
passed thus happily away in
and slow smoking along the wooded
blackbirds were whistling
from time
to
time we discovered a flower in the open spaces, which
showed
spring was
that
anemone, with
its
mezereon, with
leaves,
and
its
surely
coming
wood
milk-white petals, or a branch of
pink flowers opening before the
Japanese appearance.
its
Jules stopped and gathered a stem of black helebore.
would
" All,
like to
how beautiful " he said. " How one

make a careful study of these leaves
!
so finely cut
so decorative,
of
dark green, almost
brown, out of which comes this pale green stem, with

its clusters of
colour.
greenish flowers edged with pale rose-
What
tender shades
lovely forms,
This
is
and what a variety of
what they ought
to give as a
copy to the children in the schools of design, instead

of the eternal
and wearisome Diana de Gabies!"
-A,*
U-,
"V
&
AS
We
MAN AND
did not return
till
ARTIST.
77
when there was
evening,
smoky
magnificent sunset, which crimsoned the

of Reville,
and made the
light clouds
roofs
scattered over
the sky look like a strew of rose-leaves.
The next day was the

leave
after
my
visit.
making
fine
last of
long embraces,
We
took
plans for
returning to Damvillers for the September holiday,

while the grandfather, shaking his hoary head, mur-
mured
here ?"
"
sadly,
Who
knows
And Barbeau, and
you
if
me
find
will
Golo, and Basse bounded
and barked round the omnibus that took us away

with tremendous noise.
I did not see Jules again
month
till
later, at
the
opening of the Salon, in front of L' Amour an Village,
which had a
full success.
was
ill,
and complained
more acute than formerly
of pains in the loins

lie
He
suddenly disappeared mysteriously.
the atelier in
Rue Legendre was
then
The door
closed,
and
of
visitors
were told that the painter was gone into the country.
We
did not
self,
that,
to
know
till
later that
he had hidden him-
undergo a sharp and painful treatment, and
scarcely
convalescent, he had gone to breathe
the
sea air in
his
days there,
Brittany, at Concarneau.
in
boat,
painting the
forgetting his pains by the help of work.
He
spent
sea,
and
JULES BASTIEX-LEPAGE
78
"When he came to see us again in October, he

appeared to be recovered
difficulty,
and
his
but digestion was
habitual gaiety was, as
still
it
His character was changed.
clouded over.
were,
There
were no more of those trenchant affirmations of which

his comrades
sometimes complained
and even
gent,
much more than was
affectionate,
He
usual with him.
did not stay long in Paris, but
hastened back to Damvillers,
work again.
his
He
he was indul-
get
to
seriously to
arrived in time to be present during
grandfather's
departed loaded with
The
moments.
last
years
though
but,
man
old
surely
expected, his death was a painful blow to the survivors.
"
The
house," he
Only
than one could believe.
" is
wrote,
empty more
a few days ago, at
any
moment, a door would open and the grandfather

appeared,
without
motive,
without
speaking or being spoken to

kindly face was enough.
One
went away, as before, without
object,
without
but the sight of his

kissed him, and he
sitting down,
object,
going into the garden, coming back, and always with

the same kind face.
remember now that he has
been growing paler for some days.

have no idea
how empty
the house
We
often talk
accustomed to
it.
is.
of
No, you can

I cannot get
him with my
AS
mother
weep
with
ABTIST.
what pleasure
him with
for
MAN AND
tears
It
79
not that we
is
we reason about
and we
it,
appear resigned and courageous; but behind

there
a sad feeling of want, of absolute loss.
is
...
the touch one wants.
am
and
all
so
to-day, for the first time, I
was
fine,
went out
to
it,
work;
shoot larks;
to
the sun was shining, and the
me
This did
country beautiful.
It is
with
ill
I have not been able
still.
the weather
I have been
that
good."
Indeed, the health of the artist, far from improving,
was becoming daily more uncertain.

digestive
tube,"
said
he,
"that
"It
out
is
the
is
of order."
Nevertheless, he worked with his usual courage, over-
looking his Concarneau studies, planning a

ture,
and only stopping to go out
new
pic-
shooting or
to
saunter through the woods.

"
Our evening walks
are the best part of the day
(letter to Ch. Bande, Nov. 27,

Prom the setting of the sun
uight the spectacle
with the
is
ing;
and,
meadows
reflect
all
is,
Every
dark.
Sometimes the subject of the
weather.
with
is
it
that
The programme changes
dramatic; the next day
piece
imagine
new.
is
till
1883) "
"
the
the
constant
brilliant
it is
soft
rain,
and charm-
our inundated
scenery.
Can you
our pleasure, in your dingy Paris
The
80
next morning
much
is
too slow in coming
to put clown last night's impression
am making
a heap of sketches,
sure in
Then
it.
here
picture on the way.

a
is
naturally, the wood,

:
and
Guess
I have
dogs.
and the wood
so that I
much
find
a surprise
wounded deer taken by the
year
one wants so
at
pleaa
new
The
subject
is
The
scene
is,
this time
of
only a few leaves of brilliant yellow against the
marvellous rosy -grey of the branches of the trees
then the violet tone of the dead leaves flattened on

the
soil,
and a few green briars round a pool under
The
willow.
deer chose
it
place
was not chosen by me.
himself to die there
for I
killed
the other day, and he went there to be
hundred yards from where he was shot
The
him
taken, a
just opposite
the spot where Minet killed a hare.
was then
It
Afterwards I sketched
that this picture struck me.

in
and reconstructed the scene
and, as I wanted a
model, I killed a second deer. ..."
Here
is
characteristic
symptom
he who
for-
merly only wrote the shortest of notes, scribbled in

haste at the corner of a table,
sive letters to his friends,
love of
"
life,
My
now
sent long, expan-
showing signs of redoubled
of art, of the beauties of nature
dear friends" (Jan.
3,
1884), "if you could
AS
MAN AND
ARTIST.
81
see your poor Bastien, with this heap of letters to
write you would certainly say:
...
my
It
changed
lie is
!'
wishes had the extraordinary virtue of
should profit
love,
How
themselves, I should like that
fulfilling
'
by
it,
you,
whom
and that 1884 should
bring health and happiness and success to
all.
My
mother's wishes are the same as mine, and she re-
we
joices that
friend,
are to
see
you soon.
Ah,
dear
what pleasure you would have in living upon
the woods, as I feed
upon them now almost everyday,
along with Golo and Barbeau

delicate tones
sitely line,
What
marvellously
and the fading out of daylight, and
when the evening comes on

with their
they are so tall in
tall,
some
The woods
are exqui-
dry, ivory-coloured grasses
of the open spaces that they
caress your face as you pass,
and the cool touch upon
your face and hands, hot with walking,
is
a delicious
I rarely leave the woods before night, for
sensation.
I
my
must send up a few salutes to the wild ducks with
my gun
from
before going
in.
great distance, but
One hears them coming

it
is
difficult to
judge
if
they are far away or near, from the peculiarity of

their erv
a
so they have often passed,
good way
off,
and are already
before one finds out
missed them.
6
that one has
82
"
This
you know that I am not a stay-at-
is to let
home, as you might think.
I find
it
important to
walk a good deal, for in this way I regain a

health.
My
hut
better
it is
A
ours.
very
little
stomach was heginning to get wrong,

."
!
few days after this I met a mutual friend of

" Well,"
ill.
he said to me, " our poor Bastien
They think
it is
hopeless."
is
V.
INDEED
lie
was very
The treatment
ill.
lie
had
undergone in the summer of 1883 had not heen

successful.
The pains
in the loins
and howels
had returned with greater violence at the end of

January.
By the advice of
his friend Dr. Watelet he again
went to Paris in March to consult Dr. Potain. Without any illusions as to the fatal nature of the disease,
the
doctors
thought that a change of
air
and of
climate might, morally and physically, produce good

results.
for
They advised
that he should go to Algiers
two months.
Bastien himself, seized with
tor
movement which
seriously
south.
as
ill,
It
|>o>sil>l(>
Felix,
that longing desire
often torments invalids
had experienced
and by his mother.
are
wish to go to the
was decided that he should

for Algiers,
who
start as
soon
accompanied by his servant
84
On
went
He
the morning of the day fixed for starting I
Rue Legendre
to the
had gone
filling
about the
who had never
Mme.
I found only
his picture-agent.
tered
good-bye to him.
complete some arrangements with
to
was occupied in
to say
her
who
the trunks which were scat-
The brave
studio.
left
Bastien,
home
at
little
mother,
Damvillers for more
than a few days together, was preparing
for this long
journey to an unknown country quite simply, with an

apparent tranquillity, as
she were going as far as
if
Saint Cloud.
The hope
that the change might be good for Jules
was enough to give her courage

of all her old
ways of
to face this upsetting
Sometimes
living.
only,
when
she was carefully arranging the linen in the trunk,

the tears would rise to her eyes and a quiver of pain
pass over her
Upon
lips.
the chairs and against the walls were jxlaced
the recent studies brought from Damvillers, and one

felt
one's heart tighten
the sight of these last
at
works, where nature had been observed and rendered
with
incomparable
They were The
skill,
Frog-fisher,
Washerwoman, The Pond

of the
penetration,
Wood, The Church
The
at
at
and charm.
Little Sweep,
Damvillers,
The
The Edge
Concarneau, and that
MAX AND
AS
study of
Midnight Sky so
him walk with
distressed
at
His thin
face
in,
and on
was
difficulty into the studio, I
change that had come over him.
the
had become quite bloodless
of his
neck was peeling
no
in
life
original, with the clouds
moment Bastien-Lepage came
this
seeing
85
was almost black.
scattered over an azure that
At
AllTIST.
off;
seemed
his hair
the skin
have
to
His questioning blue eyes expressed an
it.
anguish and weariness that was heartrending. "Well,"

said he, after having
my
at
studies ?
embraced me, "are you looking
When
people see them at George
they will say that the
Petit's,
."
When
I said to him that his long
made
absence that morning had
he added quite low, and taking

the studio
so far, one
put
my
"
When
one
is
must prepare
affairs
in
Bastien could
when he gave himself the
paint the landscape too,

trouble
little
order.
mother anxious,
his
me
into one corner of
going to take a journey
for
it.
Poor
...
little
I wanted to
mother
"
he
Down at home
she used to spend whole nights in rubbing me for my
rheumatism, and I let her think that it did me good.
went on
" she has
been very brave
Now, perhaps the Algiers sun
Hope
last
alternated with discouragement.
he recovered a
little.
will cure
me."
During break-
I was to go to Spain at
;;
86
the end of
March
and
him
to join
We
promise.
me
he urged
to
We
in Algiers.
change
my
plans,
ended with a
tried hard to appear gay;
we
half-
clinked
our glasses as we drank to the hope of soon meeting

again, hut each one felt his throat tighten,
away
and turned
from the other his moist eyes.
to hide
the house in the
Rue Legendre
with
my
heart
left
full of
the saddest forebodings.

Jules
had a good crossing, and his

17th, was reassuring
"
My
first
you must come,
May
and
such
The
verdure
always well
for a
in
is
ing
earth
upon the
and
calmness
-
and
coloured
is
in
it
is
flower
everywhere.
and grey, and,
like patches,
of
outlines
picturesque
And
new, the trees very dark green.

of all this,
Here
it
them,
the
no getting out of
Everything
heaps
delicate
placed
is
thousand reasons.
Paris.
flowers!
dated March
letter,
dear friends, there
just like
They
the same night for Marseilles.
left
and
in the midst
roads, the Arabs, of astonish-
splendid
carriage,
ash-coloured
under
draperies
their
raga-
muffins as proud as kings, and better dressed than
Talma.
is
They
all
like another.
moment, gave
wear
It
a shirt
seems as
expression
to
and burnous
if
not one
each one, at every
his
thought
by his
AS
manner
MAN AND
AL'TI ST.
of draping his garment.
87
It
once
is
more
triumph of blank truth over arrangement and
the
The
conventionalism.
wishes
it
the
like
sorrowful
man, whether he
or not, in spite of himself
Beauty,
gay.
am
not draped
is
convinced,
truth: neither to the right nor to the
is
exact
hut in
left,
the middle.
" All
telling
you we have hired a
house at Mustapha Superior.
It is half Arah, half
this
without
French, quite white, with an interior court opening

a garden
into
The garden
fig,
twice as big as that at Damvillers.
is full
of orange-trees,
and a quantity of other
I do not
and lemon, almond,
trees, the
know and probably never
not trim like a park, hut
names
shall.
All this,
left a little a hi diable, like
Then we have
our garden at home.
of which
the right of
walking in a magnificent garden which joins ours.
We
have at least eight rooms
thought of you.
In
all
in counting
them I
directions round this house
there are delightful walks within reach for invalid
limbs
1
moins
in short,
les
it
femmes'
is
Mahomet's Paradise,
I have
Rasbah, the old Arab town

see
it
my
from a distance as yet
said
nothing
legs
have only
let
but,
my
friend,
good
about
me
imagine that against a morning sky you have, some-
88
times in the palest rose, sometimes in silvery grey,
sometimes in faint blue, and so

against the pearly sky
more
everywhere
on
or less elongated rec-
tangles, placed irregularly, hut always horizontally, in
the
manner
and you
of a line of low hills,
it
was a town with habitations, so
cate is the tone of
it,
hut for some
windows placed here and
So you must come
finer joy.
ing upon
it,
My
and what, then, am I
you could say about

at the
could not have
more unexpected, and never
a sensation
all this
a sweeter and
mother
is
count-
What new
things
The
was very
sea
of the
Felix
among them, but they
passengers suffered
my
mother and
some
got
fine
Midway
beginning and end of our crossing.
some
deli-
holes of rare
little
One
there.
have
One would
the delicate colouring of the old town.
not suppose
will
sleep.
We
were twenty hours in crossing, and we were not tired
on
arriving.
embrace from
His
The
set
my mother
as
first letter,
off
" I
am
seemed
start
good
and from me."
may be
climate of Algeria did
sufferings
fire "
Come,
seen,
was
him good
full of ardour.
at first,
and his
to be relieved.
preparing myself bravely for the ordeal by
(April letter to Ch.
matism take
flight
Baude)
"
may my
rheu-
and depart with the coming attack
of the sun
MAN AND
When
is
it
ARTIST.
89
hot here,
it
heat and these health experiences, I
by
that I have seen
all
seen what any
bagman might
the selling of his goods
is
marvellous
but
happy, even
and yet I have only
see
it
am
who
is
busy about
has been enough to
What remains
give nic great delight.
town
of the old
For those un-
happy eyes that only see the colours on the

white
but picture to yourself a long
high, with a depression in the middle,

if
to the sea,
and
Arab
one holds one's breath when, at
sudden turn, the vision reappears.
it is
quite
still
Apart from these calculations about the
bearable.
excited,
is
palette,
hill,
rather
and sloping as
this hill all covered with elongated
or elevated cubes of
which one cannot distinguish the
thickness
remaining unnoticed by the eye
all this
that is ravished by the delicate tone, rosy, greenish,

pale blue,
" If
making altogether white tinted with salmon.
one did not know
it
beforehand, one would
never dream
that
amongst these cubes of plaster
thousands of
men
are walking, talking,
men
of noble
something very
manner, proud and calm, and with

like indifference or
And
they are right.
ugly.
What matter
They
sleeping
are beautiful
They
is it to
.
me
are
contempt
beautiful,
for us.
we
are
that they are knaves
90
" Yesterday I
went
to take a bath.
had
to
go
three or four hundred steps through streets full of
In a passage a Jew was
merchants.
pearls
and corals
wide,
were three Arabs
selling silks,
in front of his shop, not two yards
an
man, another of
old
There they
middle age, the third about seventeen.
were, seated, attentive, calm, wishing to buy, consult-
ing together, making scarcely a gesture with their
hands, always kept at
full length,
but sitting quietly,
never hurrying, reflecting enormously, and keeping

all
under
while
the
gentlest
mama
beautiful
are
like
not
understand
was
to
buy
the
in rags,
scene
was
clear the
big children a thing of
It
was
could
clear they were
poor, for the youngest
much worn
little
Jew was
but they took
pieces of false coral
selling dear to these
no value.
The one
age was counting on the table, with his
groups of
and the burnouses of the others, though
such pains in counting the

it
'They
it.
she.
so
and the relations that
They were
not in rags, were very
that
said
tbey had come down from the higher
part of the town.
was
struck with
statues,'
united these three Arabs.
come
softest,
The youngest was superb
attitudes.
handsome that
burnouses the
their
five,
tbe
little
pieces
flat
of middle
hand by
of coral which he
MAN AND
AS
chose as he counted them

five
pieces to the
"What
ABTIST.
91
thus adding each
time
heap that he drew towards him.
strikes one is this
simple colouring, these
magnificent folds, and then this serious childishness.
"I was
not aide to wait
was cold and
It
brought
me back
draughty
to the
I long for the time
what lovely things I shall
passage, which
this
in
of
fact
when
the end of the scene.
till
my
man
be a
shall
see,
poor crazy
legs.
again
and perhaps I shall
"
do
April 23rd (to the same)
"
Now
I take myself by
the ear and drag myself to the letter-paper,
Nothing
the
needful
the
thousand things I have to
things.
wanting,
is
say,
and
all
neither
nor above
all
the tender affection that I keep in store for you.

"
Emile says that you are coming, and soon

you
alarmed,
be
will
melt
not
the
in
hot
don't
sun.
There are cool places in the garden, where one can

Btretch oneself, with a magnificent landscape at one's
feet.
We
have
you will see

will
will
relax,
only bad the beat since yesterday:
bow good you

and you
will
make some.
your muscles
it,
go back quite young.
make some excursions together
An\ way there are plenty

to
will find
all
if
round us
am
to
We
up to
it.
tempt you
92
"
Emile that I went
You have heard from

I bore the
Blidah.
little
journey very well at
but I was tired afterwards.

rest,
and go
am
slowly, in order that I
have scarcely done anything
first,
going to begin to
may
go farther.
now, for I don't
till
to
feel
myself up to remaining long in the same position, as

a painter must,
The
waited
heat
who thinks only
health that he hoped
increased,
The
fatigued.
me
reached
Jules
last
the contrary, as the
more unwell and more
felt
he
that
letter
wrote to
There was
all
through
Regnault had
sentiment of
it
me
" Siete
Granada, in that hotel, the
at
where Fortuny and Henri
Suelos,"
lived.
and so anxiously
for,
On
did not come.
for,
of his work."
touching melancholy and discouragement.

"
My
good friends, this
is
delightful.
It
is
too
good to get your photographs at the same time as

your kind and affectionate
going to Spain.
who should
Lucky
letter.
fellows
could
Hut that
not
is to
a cripple, and
us.
We
so like to see a bull fight
not time to come, and indeed

\<u
am glad you are

Go along while I,
I
are
it
was
selfish to
You had
ask you.
have stayed more than a few days.
am no
longer
when we can have two months
before
be done some day when I
comfortably
settled
here.
At
this
AS
moment
fche
am
MAN AND
ABTIST.
93
writing to yon under the tent set up in
terraced court of our villa, with a wonderful view-
Placed a
before me.
formed by the
little to
hills of
the
of a semicircle,
left
Mustapha, 170 yards above the
which flows at their base, we have at every hour of
Bea
the day, a different landscape;
for the sides of the
of ravines, and the sun, according to the
hills are full
time of day, throws their slopes into light, or makes

a
network of shade, in a way quite peculiar to this

Little villas gleaming in the sun-
coiner of Africa.
shine or grey in the shade give effect to the groups of

verdure, the whole looking from the distance like a
embroidery, with bosses of green harmoniously
rich
arranged.
Algiers,
All
this
runs
down toward the Gulf
and trending away from here forms Cape
Above are the
Matifou.
crests of the Little Atlas,
away, and lost in heaven's blue
far
gardens spread out their golden

according
Add
you
as
one
to this the
looks
upon
all
little
three,
better,
near by, sloping
or silvery verdure,
or
olive
eucalyptus.
perfume of the orange and lemon
the pleasure of telling you
trees,
of
Tristan
and you
that
included,
will
that
have the
embrace
I
I
state
am
of
my
heart.
"Enjoy
yourselves,
and
you,
my
dear
forester,
94
with your Toledo eyes, what are you going to give

to the world after all this delight of sunshine
and
kindly fellowship and the loving union of the charming trio that you
make
the heart and voice to
Ah
that
shall he
mama
regards from
all
make
a fourth
and from me.
me
what
rheumatism
the
after
seems to
It
last
say you ?
Kindest
embrace to
three of you."
The improvement he had experienced on

in
I have
Algiers
ceased
about
strength and appetite
end of
the
gradually failed
arriving
His
April.
;
and
at
the
May it was decided to take the invalid hack to

France.
He settled again in the Rue Legendre with
end of
the poor
When
little
I saw
mother, who never
him again
friend
little
He
that
was nowhere in the garments that
His
he could no longer work
hope.
afterwards.
His thinness was such
were made for his journey.

service
him
I was shocked at the progress
the disease had made.
my unhappy
left
had just begun
legs refused their
and yet he kept
new treatment, and
talked of going into Brittany "as soon as he was
He
strong enough."
drove every day in the
Bois
when the weather was
fine,
day on cushions
corner of the studio, occupied
in
in the
contemplating,
with
and spent the
heartrending
rest of his
look,
his
MAN AND
AS
hanging on the
studies
ABTIST.
walls.
95
This inaction was
most distressing to him.

"
Ah
" cried he, " if I
was told
They
are going to
cut off your two legs, hut after that you will be able to
j).ti
ut again, I
He
could
would willingly make the

only
now with
sleep
sacrifice.
.'"
.
the help of in-
jected morphine, and he waited with impatience for
the hour
relief,
when
and a
new supply should
give
him some
factitious drowsiness should
make him
forget his suffering.
In proportion as digestion became more

his appetite
became more
capricious.
He
difficult
wanted to
have dishes made which reminded him of the cooking

of his village; then,
he turned
"No,"
it
to
when they were brought
away disgusted, without
to him,
tasting
them.
said he, pushing aside the plate, "that's not
have
it
good
it
must be made down
there,
prepared by the Damvillers people, with home-grown

vegetables."
And
his moist eyes a
while he was speaking one saw by
sudden and painful calling up of the
impressions of former days

old
the
he saw
all
at
once the
home, the gardens and orchards of Damvillers

fall
the time
meal.
at
of evening, the peaceful village interiors at
when
the
fires
were lighted for the evening
96
As the season advanced
liis
strength
In September his brother was obliged

his back to carry
him
decreased.
to take
him on
and he drove
to the carriage,
about slowly for an hour in the avenues of the Bois.
He
could not read, and was easily wearied by con-
His nerves were become very
versation.
irritable,
and the slightest odours were disagreeable
His courage seemed
sense of smell.
to
to forsake
the same time he was always wanting to
at
what others thought of his
his
him
know
His blue eyes
illness.
with their penetrating look anxiously searched the

eyes of his friends, and of his mother,
The
his side.
dissimulate,
heroic
little
woman
who never
left
did her best to
and was always smiling and
affecting a
cheerfulness and a confidence which were painful to

see
then,
when she could escape
for a
moment, she
hastened into the neighbouring room and melted into

tears.
For months
this cruel
agony was thus prolonged.
Bastien was only a shadow of himself.

of
December, during great part of the
On
the 9th
night,
he
talked of Damvillers with his mother and his brother.
Then
at
about four in the morning he said to them,
with a kiss, " Come,

All
three
slept.
it
is
Two
time for children to sleep."
hours later
Mme.
B. was
AS
awakened
drink
by
MAN AND
Jules,
who
ABTIST.
asked
for
97
something
to
she rose, and brought him a cup of tea, and
alarmed on finding that the invalid groped for the
w.is
cup to guide
but he
it
to his lips
could no longer see;
lie
spoke and even joked ahout the difficulty
still
he had in moving his limbs.

afterwards
Shortly
from
sleep
evening,
I saw
into
death,
December
he expired
orbits,
made him look
the 12th of
sightless
its
His
December
and deeply
one of those Spanish
like
figures of Christ, fiercely cut in
On
his mortuary bed,
a thick covering of flowers.
poor emaciated face, with
sunk
the
in
six
at
10, 1884.
him next day lying on
the midst of
in
he dozed, and sliding gently
wood by Montanez.
a long train of friends
and admirers accompanied his remains to the Eastern

Railway
Station,
whence
Meuse.
The next
day, Sunday, the whole population
it
was
conveyed
of Damvillers waited at the entrance of the
funeral
the
carriage,
the
to
town
for
which brought back Bastien-
Lepage to his native place.
The sad procession advanced

from
at
slowly on that road
Verdun where the painter had loved
twilight,
blotted
out
talking with his friends.
those
hills
to
walk
pale mist
and woods whose familiar

7
98
outlines
The
he had so often reproduced.
stopped before the
little
cortege
church where he had in-
tended painting his Burial of a Young Girl.
morning was showery

flowers, placed the
the wreaths and festoons of
night before on his
revived and refreshed
The
by the moisture
coffin,
;
were
when they
were heaped up upon the grave they seemed to come

to life again,
perfume a
and
send out with their renewed
to
last adieu
from Paris to the painter of the
peasants of the Meuse.
"
VI.
ON
the 17th
of the
following March, at the
Hotel de Chimay, now connected with the
Ecole des Beaux Arts, the exhibition of the

works of him
whom we
was opened.
All the works of Bastien, with the ex-
ception of the
On
visiting
have surnamed the " Primitif
Jeanne d'Arc, were collected

the most
exhibition
this
there.
prejudiced
minds were struck with the suppleness, the fecundity,

and power of the talent of this painter, carried
For the
the age of thirty-six.
first
off at
time his varied
and original work could be judged as a whole.
One could study

a
in
detail
thoroughly conscientious
productions
these
artist,
and
follow
of
the
growth of each composition as one follows the de-
velopment of a beautiful plant

ings, so pure, so sober,
first
in
the
and expressive; then
drawin
the
skeicbes so truthful and sincere; and, lastly, in the

finished pictures, so
harmonious and luminous.
By
100
the
of the
side
La
Hay),
great
pictures,
Les Foins (The
Saison (VOctohre (October),
Le Mendiant
(The Beggar), Pere Jacques (Father Jacques), and

L' Amour au Tillage (Love in the Village), like windows
opening upon
itself,
life
which the most penetrating
in
small portraits
of
one admired that collection
physiological observation was united with an execu-
most
tion
masterly,
Dutch
the
Lessive,
the
to
of
La
landscapes
and
interiors
Old
Beggar),
breathing
Les Vendanges
allant a la
(The
like
or to those full
London Bridge and
La
then one stopped before
odours
the
(The Meadow), La Mare (The
Prairie
and motion,
Thames
worthy of
La Forge and La
Les Bles Murs (Pipe Corn),
air
One
delicate.
and of the woods, such as Le Vieux
Gueux (The
Vintage),
those
such as
painters,
of the fields
Pool),
from
delighted
passed
precise,
Petite
the
fille
Ecole (The Little Girl going to School),
or that poetic Idyl,
Le
Soir au Village (Evening in
the Village).
In
this
hundred canvases and

nothing
containing
exhibition
trifling,
more
than
two
hundred drawings, there was
nothing indifferent.
The
smallest
sketches were interesting because they revealed passionate worship of what
is
simple and natural, hatred
The
By
Inn.
Jules Bastien-Lepage.
AS
MAN AND
ARTIST.
L03
and the conventional, and the incessant
of the almost
striving of the artist after his ideal, which
healthy and
One
collection.
sensation
poetry exhaled
robust
left
Truth.
from this
Hotel de Chimay with a
the
strengthening and
of
is
reviving
pleasure,
such as one gets from certain aspects of nature

limpid waters, and the bright
deep woods,
a
sky of
summer morning.
Unhappily this joy was mixed with the sad thought
of the
duced
sudden death of the young
entering
first
pictures
at the
rooms reserved
had already experienced
mown down
same time as
for
his
long time, impressed with

at
works of the talented young
Bashkirtseif,
and
these
was, for a
feeling that I
tion of the
pro-
masterly work.
all this
On
man who had
the exhibi-
artist, Aldlle.
like Bastien, in full youth,
This cruel death seemed
he.
only a had dream.
On
seeing again these unfinished sketches, these
perfect portraits, these canvases that I
had seen him
paint one after another, I felt as if I was conversing
with the painter and the friend

this.
felt
that he was
of all his force.
appear
among
still
who had
living
and
in
I expected every
moment
happy,
fortified
us, smiling,
created
all
possession
to see
him
by the now
104
unanimous admiration of the crowd gathered before

his work.
Alas
instead of himself
my
eyes only met
portrait, placed in the first room,
his
and the mournful
eloquence of the wreaths and flowers attached to the
frame recalled
me
harshly to the heartrending
The poor " Primitif " will
reality.
The
paint no more.
atelier
at
Damvillers where we have spent such happy hours
is
closed for ever.
The peasants
of the village will
no more meet their countryman on the roads where

he used to work in the open
The
air.
rustic flowers
that he used to paint in the foreground of his pictures,
the blue chicory and the groundsel, will flower again

this
summer by
the edges of the
fields,
but he will
not be there to study and admire them.
Among
great
pictures
remarked
with
the sketches exhibited by the side of the

there
and that I now saw again
at Damvillers,
deep emotion.
woman
was one that I had already
It
represents
an old peasant
going in the early morning into her garden
to visit her apple tree in
blossom.
The
nights
of
April are perfidious, and the spring frosts give mortal
wounds
the old
woman draws
to her
flowering
branch and inspects with anxious eye the disasters

caused by the hurtful rays of the red moon.
Bastien-
AS
Lepage was
fruits;
like this tree, full of sap
105
and of promising
and the flowers had given many and
rich
then in a single night a murderous frost
destroyed
the tree
ABTIST.
For years the heavens had been clement
blossom.
to him,
MAN AND
all
the
itself.
open flowers by thousands, and
All that remains
is
the splendid fruit
of past seasons, but the exquisite flavour of that the
world will long enjoy.
Things truly beautiful have wonderful

last
and
on through the centuries, hovering above the earth
where the generations of

sleep,
of
vitality
and
man
is
men
this survival of the
go turn by turn to
works of the
spirit
perhaps the surest immortality upon which
he can count.
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE AS ARTIST.
I;
Relief Pobtbait of Baste

By Augustus S
tin '<' tudt ns.
>
\
.
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE AS AETIST.
THE
work of Bastien-Lepage ranks,

with
mind,
He
a
new
the
very
best
in
to
my
modern
art.
brought to us what was in some ways
view of nature
one
whose truth was
at
once
admitted, but which was nevertheless the cause of
much
discussion and criticism.
It
was objected
to
mainly, I think, as not being in accord with established
lilies,
but nevertheless the objectors expressed
their admiration for the skill of the painter
on the other
(chiefly the
great,
It
was
hand,
younger
for
men
while,
who accepted him
those
these),
no praise was too
no admiration too enthusiastic.

is
only a few years
mourned
since his untimely death
as a loss to the whole
his
whole career
are
si ill
is
art-world, for
so recent that his fellow- students
young men, many
of
ning to obtain full recognition
them only now begin;
and yet
it is
perhaps
long enough ago to enable his work to be considered

as
;i
whole, and his place in the art-movement to be
112
seen.
For although he was an innovator, and one
showing in
all
he did a strong individuality, the
was given him by
genius
general direction of his
the artistic tendencies of his time.

It will be generally admitted that if painting has
made any advance in our

direction a new departure,
day,
if
shows in any
it
or fresh revelation of the
beauty that exists throughout nature,
development
of
which
problems
the
is
in the
have
arisen
it
from the study of landscape and of the

light.
There now prevails a
close
effects
of
and sincere study of
nature, founded on the acceptance of things as they

are,
and an increasing consciousness on the part of
artists (or
perhaps
an increasing
express
their
it
would be more correct to say
courage
on the
of
conviction) that a picture
the record of something

felt,
part
seen, of
have awakened at length to see that
is
colour everywhere
truly the
natural
roundings
is
should be
some impression
rather than be formally constructed.
beautiful, that all light is
beautiful,
all
And men
nature
of people
is
and that there
that the endeavour to
relation
to
artists
realize
to their
sur-
better than to follow unquestioning on
the old conventional lines.

the modern standpoint, and
This
it
is,
roughly speaking,
cannot be denied that
"
AS ABTIST.
an enormous advance on the accepted artistic
is
it
113
thirty or
of
ideals
who have brought
men
And
years ago.
forty
about
this
to
the
to
Pre-
the
Raphaelite brotherhood; to Millet, Corot, Eousseau,

Courbet, Manet, and Mr. Whistler
have
fought
the
outlook
clearer
and
battle
who
those
all
whom
to
we owe
due,
is
to
our present
lasting debt
of
gratitude.
It
is
surprising
little
Bastien-Lepage, based as
now, that the work of
it is
on the simple accept-
much
ance of nature, should have caused so
on
its first
we
feel
it
But
as
it
marks a new departure, and we
the
majority of people tune
and not by nature, and
nature that which

prophet,
artistic
man
made manifest
may be taken
it
view of
accepted.
Xes
is
of his
realize
nature,
"Good
referring
of course
to
it's
it
gracious,
Claude
Monet,
business to choose that aspect of

8
it
their
discloses
some time
said an
eminent
"like nature?
but a
!
in
compliment to
when he
sir!"
eyes by
them by
to
not for
is
like nature
their
only admire
as a
of independent genius that
fresh
ciitie,
men
him
has helped to form our present standpoint.
pictures
justified
on comparing his work with other
time that
that
For time has
appearance.
discussion
man
has no
114
Every picture may be
said to appeal to the spec-
tator from two sides or points of view
and the
the
literary
aesthetic.
may
picture
point a moral and
purpose of
its
its
tell
all
author
story to perfection
the rest of
and
it,
still, or,
persons would say, therefore
and so
bad
indeed be not worthy to rank as art at
And
fulfil
the
some extreme
as
may be
pictures are frequently seen.
may
may
art,
Such
all.
again, a picture
may, by raising and defining to some inner sense

emotions dimly
by us before nature, leave us
felt
with a fuller sense of beauty, a feeling of something

revealed to
or
We
story.
beautiful
us.
And
yet
it
need have no subject
convinced that this picture
are
is
that no other form of artistic expression
can precisely so touch us.
Such pictures are
but happily they do exist.
Yet, from the nature of
things,
it is
impossible but that such a picture should
speak to some
and
rare,
also the
ever
most
so slight
extent
literary picture
is
to the
mind
never without
evidence of some desire to please the eye.
The work
of Bastien-Lepage seems to
brace both these points of view.

{esthetic sides of art
If
The
me
to
em-
literary
and
were very evenly balanced in him.
we take any individual work,
as, for
example, the
AS ABTIST.
Beggar,
we
find
most
the whole
character:
and brought before us

of the picture
115
perfect
life-history
evidently
realization
the
of
this
man
of
seen
was the motive
yet the painting is in itself so full of
charm, the perception of colour so
fine,
he was equally interested in that.
He
we
feel
tried to hold
His work shows an extraordinary
the balance even.

receptive power,
that
an unequalled (almost microscopic on
occasion) clearness of vision, allied with an absolute
His
mastery of his material.

is
attitude towards nature
one of studied impartiality, and seems to show the
an intensely sympathetic nature
resolute striving of
to get at the actual optical
appearances and to suppress
And
any hint of his own feelings.
his subjects are
presented with such force and skill that their truth

to nature is at
fail
once
work
You cannot
it
stands by
if
charm of
also to feel the
method.
and
felt,
tally it
not
by any other painter's
itself.
He
it
is
model con-
paints a
not the distinct note of
man
and
you, and yon ask yourself, "
What
his
one of Bastien-Lepage's distinctions.
sure that
work.
and sincere
his simple
His impartial attitude towards

stitutes
you cannot
a painter,
the
What
man
is
I
all
am
his
stands before
he going to say
does the artist wish to express?"
You may
116
make what you can
To me,
clue.
one
it
of
him
I confess, this quality
gives you no
a very high
is
and to
be, if I
to say so, akin to Shakespeare's
method
seems to indicate a great
may presume
gift,
without a hint of his
of presenting his characters
own
Lepage
feelings towards them.
Although
it
no doubt owing to Millet
is
that
Lepage's eyes were opened to the paintableness of

country
life,
he saw his subjects in his own way and
With
approached them from his own point of view.

Millet
the
subject
and type were everything
individual nothing.
his subject,
the
He
was passionately moved by
its
action and sentiment were
and once
He
expressed, everything was subordinated to them.
cared nothing for the smaller truths of detail provided
the general impression were true to his mental image,
and his aim was avowedly
Lepage, on the con-
impression on the spectator.

trary,
appears to
impression.
He
avoid communicating his
will give
as
before
he has found
the
sympathy
same
you may,
pathos
scene
mental
you the visual impression,
as truly as he possibly can

find
impose his mental
to
in
but for his part
by any comment of his own.
if
you please,
and poetry in
nature,
lie
if
it
you
will not help
as
have
you
AS ABTIST.
117
And whereas with Millet the interest always centres

in tlie subject, in Lepage it centres in the individual.
His pictures become
type,
He
portraits.
and sets himself to paint him
amid
the
other,
subject,
as
at his
and,
surroundings,
natural
his
chooses a good
somehow
And
yet this is
anything belonging to the subject
not because
slurred, but because the attention is taken
subject to the actors in

;
or
motive and reason for the
picture, takes a subordinate place.
live
work and
For
it.
is
beyond the
his figures not only
they convince us of their identity as individuals,
and gradually we get so interested in them that we

begin to forget what they are doing, and almost to
We
wonder why they are there.
them that we cannot
so close to
sense of their presence.
Lepage's
is
not
skill
this
picture ?
are, in fact,
Is
It is
get
away from the
no small tribute to
that his people do so interest us
interest
it
conflicting
when
eyerything
There
is
I cannot
before a picture of Lepage's I accept
on
but
to the advantage of the picture that
thinking
no room
for
concentrated
it
it
in
over, I begin to doubt.
doubt about Millet
abont what he meant.

always
element in the
the interest should be so equally divided

tell
brought
no mistake
With him the attention
on the business in hand
is
and
118
without
desiring
qualify
to
the
great respect
admiration which I have for Lepage's work,

to
me
it
and
seems
that the point of view of Millet included more
essential truths
(or
perhaps
excluded those which
were not essential to the expression of the subject)
and that
for this
reason Lepage's most successful
pictures depend least
upon the
interest
of subject,
and most upon the interest of portraiture.
For
the
man
'is
best seen
and they are altogether ad-
His people stand before you, and you
mirable.
that they
must be true
them
place
in his portraits that the great capacity of
it is
to the very
no slurring of
sitters,
There
surprisingly original result.

detail
is
produces a
no forcing of
is
everything
out relentlessly, lovingly. There
standpoint
loves to
in an even, open, light, and simply accept-
ing the ordinary conditions of his
effect,
He
life.
feel
is
searched
the same impartial
the same apparent determination to keep
himself out of the picture.
From
the artist's point
of view they are altogether delightful
modelled with
the thoroughness of a sculptor, the colour and atmos-
phere are always true, and the execution
is
and
point to any
direct.
modern
It
portraits
would be
difficult to
which surpass
and charm such works as the
unlaboured
for technical
" First
mastery
Communion,"
AS ARTIST.
119
the portraits of his parents, his
Woolf,
Sarah
and the Beggar.
Each
Albert
Theuriet,
ftieche,"
plete
elaborate
and
of
dress
"
the
gloves
ill-fitting
Communion
well as
as
picture,
M.
Bernhardt, "Pas
grandfather, of
of these is a
com-
The
being a portrait.
the
actress,
of the
cheap muslin
in
child,
" First
the
the matters of minor detail
all
are
dwelt on with, in each case, the fullest sense of their

literary
importance to the picture, and yet the paint-
ing of these things, as of

itself that
all else, is so delightful
the artist desires no other reason.
While landscape entered as

his rustic pictures,
figures;
in
it
a matter of course into
was always subordinate
to the
although he carried the finish of the fore-
grounds in these pictures to the farthest possible

point, delighting to express the beauty of everything
weeds,
felt,
sticks,
and shown
to be beautiful.
some admirable
landscapes:
all
was
But he painted
also
stones, the clods of earth
of these I have
but few, and the recollection of
one in particular
remains with
me
I have seen.
It is a field of ripe golden corn
as one of the
are the distant fields
and low
the clear blue sky a few clouds.
seen
most beautiful things
hills,
beyond
and overhead in
The
corn
is
swaying
and rustling in the breeze, and small birds are
flitting
120
The whole
about.
fresh air
scene
is
bathed in daylight and
with no great stretch of fancy one can see
the corn moving, and hear the singing of the birds.
One
is filled
with a sense of the sweetness of nature
and the beauty of the open

so simple
it
no
And
fields.
effort in design,
no
the picture
is
apparent
artifice
impresses as a pure piece of nature.
This love of nature and resolute determination not

truth as he saw
to depart
from the
marks
the work of Bastien-Lepage.
all
was possible
for
an
strict literal
artist
As
far as it
nowadays, he appears to
The
have been uninfluenced by the old masters.

lesson he seems to have learnt from
It is this attitude of
him
mind which brings him
into kinship with the early painters,
and which led
He
his being styled " the primitive."

to form his art
only
them was that
nature, which sufficed for them, should suffice for

also.
it,
to
did not set out
on the methods of the older painters,
but going as they did, direct to nature, he resolutely
put on one side (as far as was possible to one familiar

with them) the accepted pictorial
to
artifices.
He
seems
have set himself the task of going over the ground
from the beginning; and the

promising and unconventional
subjects
should be
fact
that his
uncom-
presentment of his
expressed by means of a most
AS ARTIST.
121
highly accomplished, very modern, and very elegant
technique, was one of the things which, while
it
greatly
charmed, at the same time puzzled and surprised

people.
It
was so
different
from what had heen seen,
or might reasonably have heen expected
understand
some
thoroughly
master
his
wilfully affected in
subjects,
his
simple
was understood
But
this view was,
so
much
to
the
so that he
not
very
is
only
scenes
the individuals
artist
to read
M. Theuriet
to
see
and how simply and
completely adjusted to
inspiration
was not long
life
and
It is seldom indeed that one finds
associations.
artist so
it
from his early
naturally his art developed
the treatment
and one has only
the very interesting memoir of
how mistaken
so
acceptance of nature
appearing to them as a pose.

before he
man
consummate
so
art,
must he
painter,
of
his
of
and one can
that
feeling
critics
his surroundings
able to go hack for his mature

to
his
and, in
first
impressions,
he finds himself.
led
is
in
hut
some cases no doubt,
who awakened them.
nowadays
an
many
As
a rule
directions
an
before
Bastien-Lepage had his doubts
and hesitations, of course, hut they were soon over,

and almost from the
on his path.
start
he seems to have decided
122
The advantage
of this to
him
work must
in his
have been enormous, as any one who has painted in

the country will
population
peasant
know
every
is
models in a
Lepage
own experience
have been friends with
to
(though, of
and
far as
temporary
it is
for
it
is
artist
models,
his
all
lively
was,
it
an interest
Dam-
think, due to
own
to this, as well as to his
am
an
different grounds) in
that he was enabled
energy,
and
on
course,
in Paris
as
some extent
As
so that
all
But one can imagine
village.
and that his pictures excited as
villers
and the
slow to understand, and distrustful of
and in many cases impossible,
difficult,
no surplus
one has his work to do
that lies outside his
to get
for villages contain
untiring
to complete so
aware, he was unique
much.
among
con-
being so happily circumstanced
artists in
evidence of the simple sincerity of the
man
that he found his ideal in the ordinary realities of

his
own experience
exists
feeling,
no doubt, that beauty
everywhere waiting for him who has eyes to
see.
It has
been frequently said
ot
Bastien-Lepage that
or, at
he had no feeling for beauty

he was indifferent to
arrive at
it
but as
it
any
is
any satisfactory definition of
rate, that
impossible to
beauty, this
AS ARTIST.
Taking the word, how-
point cannot be discussed.

ever, in
its
obvious and generally accepted meaning,
that of personal beauty,

is
no
ground
fair
the "First
hardt,
and
123
seems to
it
for the charge
Communion," the
"
Joan of Arc,"
me
that there
such works as
for
portrait of
Sarah Bern-
show
most refined
all
and delicate appreciation of
and
personal beauty,
should surely have led his critics to consider whether
man who
the
painted them had not very good reasons
for painting people

all
who were not
For
beautiful, too.
work cannot be judged from one point of view
we recognize that a work of
art is the
outcome of a
personal impression, and that the artist's aim

give
expression
to
his
views
insight into nature
renders
the
yet,
Bastien-Lepage's
form a clear judgment, as his
work appeals equally from
His
that
And
was exceptionally deep and wide
difficult to
it
fact
to
and the deeper his
insight into nature, the greater the result.
curiously enough,
is
different
points of view.
love of beauty, for instance, seems to go hand-
in-hand with a psychological, or even pathological

interest
dencies
and
is
this equal
prominence of different ten-
a very puzzling element in his work.
We
expect an artist to give us a strongly personal view
but here
is
one who gives us something very like an
124
analysis,
define
it
and whose personal view
and the premature ending of
now
for ever doubtful
of his mind.
his career leaves
which was the strongest bias
seems to
It
impossible to
it is
me
that his sympathies
were so wide as to try and include everything, and

that he has helped to widen the bounds of beauty,
by showing
Blake, "
limitless possibilities.
its
To
see a world in
The w ords
r
of
of sand, and
grain
heaven in a wild flower," suggest, I think, his general

feeling towards nature.
In
spite
of the wide range of his
work and the
extraordinary versatility of his execution, he kept, as

a rule, within certain limitations of treatment.
He
did not care for the strong opposition of light and
shadow, and he seems almost to have avoided those

aspects of nature which depend for their beauty on
the changes and contrasts of atmosphere and light.

All that side of nature which depends on
was
for its realization
and
a
yet
man
it
idle to
is
could not
nature's beauty
in
the
left
memory
almost untouched by him,
suppose that so richly gifted
have been keenly sensible to
all
but I think he found himself hedged
by the conditions necessary to the realization of

qualities
he sought.
For
in
painting a large
figure-picture in the open air, the painter
must almost
AS ABTIST.
12
of necessity limit himself to the effect of grey open
This he realized splendidly:
daylight.
time
may
it
detail
be said that he sought elaboration of
perhaps at the expense of
nature at times too
This
still-life.
not
is
so close that the detail
same time
general effect can be seen at the
degree
works much that
when examined
point of view of
in his small pictures, in
felt
is
approaching
effect,
much from the
which the point of view
his large
same
at the
and
but in
charming in the highest
is
in detail, fails to carry its full
value to the eye at a distance necessary to take in the
whole work.
This was the case with " Joan of Arc
in the Paris Exhibition of
and
it
was
compare this picture with Courbet's
instructive to
" Stone-breakers,"
wall.
two years ago
"
which hung near
Courbet had generalized as
it
much
on the same
as possible
everything was cleared away but the essentials

at a little distance
Courbet showed in
full
and
power and
completeness, while the delicate and beautiful work

in "
Joan of Arc
unintelligible
in
Lepage worked
"
was
lost,
and the picture
comparison.
for truth of
No
flat
and
doubt Bastien-
impression and of detail
too,
but
this
seems to show that the building-up or combining
it is
number
apparently impossible to get both
of facts, each of
which may be true of
and
itself
126
and to the
Bastien-Lepage
truths.
total give the
It is but a
general impression of truth.

isolated
sum
others, does not in its
number
has carried
of
his
endeavour in this direction farther than any of his

predecessors
in
much
it
may
be said that he has
representation
carried literal
so
fact
to
extreme limit
its
so as to leave clearly discernible to us the
question which was doubtless before him, but which
has at any rate
developed
from
itself
his
whether
it is
leaving
on one side much of that which
possible to attain literal truth without
And
beautiful in nature ?
whether
artist
has
truth
literal
realism, as an
impasse.
in
is
end in
Surely
it
work,
it is
him
most
is
further, the question arises,
the highest
leads nowhere
art,
For
truth.
;
it
is
an
but the means to whatever the
to express.
I feel convinced that realism was not the end with
Bastien-Lepage.
art,
of
great as
it
I believe that his contribution to
was, and covering as
it
does an amount
work which might well represent
work instead of the work

but the promise of his
lived, his
full
a whole
of a few short years,
life's
was
power, and that, had he
work w ould have shown a wider range of

r
nature than that of any other

liembrandt.
But
it
was not
artist,
to be.
except perhaps
AS ARTIST.
He
work
127
gave his best, and the world

;
his
name
is
richer for his
will not die.
" Quiet consummation have
And renowned
be thy grave."
GEORGE CLAUSEN.
MODERN REALISM
IN PAINTING.
The Little Sweep.

By Juki Bastien-Lepage.
MODERN BEALISM
MUCH
IN PAINTING.
has been written about Jean Francois
Millet,
and mostly from two
view.
The
picturesque
points
of
surroundings
of
the plain of Barbizon and the peasant's blouse have
tempted the sentimental biographer to dwell on the

personal note of poverty, which
the dominant one in Millet's
writer lias amplified, with
reflections suggested
In
all this,
all,
we now know was not

life.
more
The
picturesque
or less intelligence,
by the subjects of his pictures.
the painter's point of view, which
the only one that matters, has, so far
expression in print
is
is,
after
as
its
concerned, been overlooked and
omitted.
The important
fact
about Millet
is
not that
he
struggled with poverty, or that he expressed on canvas
the dignity of labour, but that he was a great artist.
As
corollaries,
colourist.
He
he was a great draughtsman and
a great
was gifted with the comprehension in
2I0DEBN REALISM IN PAINTING.
134
its
entirety of the import
of
which he wished to render.
any scene in nature
An
unerring analysis
enabled him to select what were the vital constituents

of such a scene,
and exquisite perceptions, trained by
incessant labour, to render
them
in fitting terms in
accordance with the tradition which governs the use of
each material.
may seem
It
that the process here summarized
after all only that
which governs
all art
is
production,
and that the work of the second-rate and the ordinary

differs
only from that of the master in the degree of
capacity exercised.
totally in kind.
But
The
scious, of the nature
this
not
is
so.
It differs
conception, conscious or uncon-
and aim of
art is in the
two
cases different, and, as a consequence, the practice

is different.
It
evil,
would be affectation
Paris
is
to ignore that, for
good or
for
the art-centre of European painting, and
that the most serious training in drawing and painting
that
is
Paris.
procurable on European lines
I should therefore consider
utility to serious art if it
the reasons for
my
it
is
procurable in
a service of great
were possible to make clear
conviction that the tendency of the
mass of exhibition painting in France, and, by

tion, in
England, has been in an
reflec-
inartistic direction,
MODEBN HEA LISM
IN PAINTINi h
and has led inevitably to the
135
sterile ideal
the
of
And, on the other hand, that
instantaneous camera.
the narrow stream of purely artistic painting, that has

i
lidded
more sequestered course
its
parallel with the
broad ilood of exhibition work, owes
its vitality to
profound and convinced reverence for tradition.
For
the illustration of that tradition I can find no
more
convenient source than the work of Jean Francois

Millet,
tiic
and
more
for a typical
to
fair
cite
monument
in
that
of its disregard,
is
it
respectable
achievement, the work of Bastien-Lepage affords

a
in
me
timely and perhaps the most appropriate example
possible.
What, then,
Millet
is
the
main
difference ?
work, and with what
Lepage work, and what
To begin
is it
objects ?
How
How
he strove to attain
did
did
with, Millet, ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, had seen his picture happen somewhere in

nature.
Its
difficulties of
treatment generally involved complex

suggestion of movement, or at least of
energy, to say nothing of those created by the variety

of lighting
and atmospheric
effect
of sunlight, of twilight, of the
the
management
lighting of interiors.
All these elements he was enabled, by
means
of a
highly-trained artistic memory, to retain and render in
MODERN REALISM IN
136
the
summary method which we
PAINTING.
and
call inspiration,
which has nothing in common with the piecemeal and

futile
Dealing
copying of nature of a later school.
with materials in their essential nature living and

fleeting, his execution
was in the main separated from
His observation was thus uninter-
his observation.
rupted by the exigencies of execution, and his execution
untrammelled by the fortuitous inconveniences
moment
incident on the
of observation,
and undis-
turbed, moreover, by the kaleidoscopic shifting of the

pictorial elements
which bewilder and mislead
mere
He
plein-airiste.
Do
the washtub, "

like that for
as
me for four
a picture from you."
did not say to the
if
the
woman
at
you were washing, and stay
or five hours a day, while I paint
Or
to the reaper, " Stay like
that with the scythe drawn back, pretending to reap."
"La nature nc
He knew that
pose pas"
if
figures
to quote his
observation.
it
exquisite
it is
to
be
must be by a process
This truth one of the
greatest heirs of the great school of
slow to understand, and
words.
movement were
in
painted so as to be convincing,
of cumulative
own
1830 has not been
to its further
and more
development that we owe the profoundly
learned and beautiful work of Degas.

observation
is
shifted from the
life
His
field
of the village
of
and
MODEUX BEALISM
IN PAINTING.
137
the labour of the plains, to the sordid toil of the green-
room and the hectic mysteries of stage illumination

hill
the artistic problem remains the same, and its
solution is
worked out on the same
and observed again, making
Millet observed
in the
way
little
of studies on the spot, a note sometimes
movement on
of
lines.
And when
a cigarette-paper.
held his picture he
knew
it,
lie
and the execution was the
singing of a song learned by heart, and not the painful
performance in public of a meritorious feat of
The
sight-reading.
lias style
style
and
traditions
result of this
which
is at
was that
work
the same time in the best
strictly personal.
more imitated than
his
and
Millet,
No
one has been
no
one
more
is
inimitable.
Holding
and
life
in the hollow of his
hand the
secrets of light
and movement, the secrets of form and
learnt from the visible world,
he was equipped,
colour,
like the
great masters of old, for the treatment of purely fanciful
themes; and, when he painted a reluctant

being drugged through the woods by
of cupids, he
rendered
was as much
the recurring
daily labours.
My
escape from the
at
turbulent crowd
home
monotone
nymph
of
as
when he
the
peasant's
quarrel with the gentlemen
laws
of
who
anatomy and perspective
MODEBN BEALISM IN
138
PAINTING.
by painting full-length portraits of

groups of abstractions,
is,
souls,
and family
not that they paint these
things, but that they have not first learnt something
about the laws which govern the incidence of light on

concrete
It
bodies.
might
be well
if
they would
discover whether they can paint their brother,
whom
they have seen, before they elect to flounder perennially

in Olympus.
Let
it
also be noted here that the
work of Jean
Francois Millet was, with scarcely an exception, free
from a preoccupation with the walls of an exhibition.
The
scale of his pictures
by the
artistic
and their key were dictated
requirements of the subject, and not by
the necessities or allurements of what I

brevity, competitive painting.
It
may
call for
was never a question
with him of the preparation within twelve months of
an annual poster, which was to occupy so much

space,
line-
and send the betting on him up or down as the
case might be.
What, on the other hand, were the
essential ideas
work? To begin
with, he was a
of Bastien-Lepage's
,
inter of exhibition pictures, of
Paris machins.
the ideals
He
what are called in
was an inveterate
salonnier, with
and the limitations of the typical uncul-
tured Paris art-student, the fort of his
atelier.
Faire
)DEBN BEALISM IN PAINTINi
Mi
the sura and aim of his Intention.
is
v'rai
he and his
But the truth
in their
work
truth
is
and their elaborate and
unessentials,
realities serve
Realists
have been jauntily labelled by the
Like
hasty journalist.
of
139
unlovely
only to cover themes that are profoundly
unreal.
To
begin with,
was thought to be meritorious,
it
and conducive of truth, and in every way manly and

estimable, for the painter to take a large canvas out
into the
fields
and to execute his
hourly tete-a-tete with nature.
The sun moves
in
more
is
picture
This practice
in
at once
limits of your possible choice of subject.
restricts the
weather
final
too
quickly.
possible,
You
find
grey
that
and end by never working
any other. Grouping with any approach to natural-
ness
You
found to be almost impossible.
is
find that
you had better confine your compositions to a single

figure.
And
finds, if
he be wise, that that single figure had better
be
in
with a
repose.
becomes
little
experience the photo-realist
Even then your
portrait of a
picture necessarily
The
model posing by the hour.
illumination, instead of being that of a north light in
Newman
Street,
is, it
is
true, the illumination
Cornish era Breton sky. Your subject

in
his
own
natural
is a real
surroundings, and
not a
of a
peasant
model
MODEBN REALISM IN
140
But what
from Hatton Garden.
posing for a picture as best
That woman stooping

never rise again.
an ill
PAINTING.
lie
is lie
can,
doing
and
He
looks
lie
is
it.
to put potatoes into a sack will
The
potatoes, portraits every one,
never drop into the sack, and never a breath of
air circulates
around that painful rendering in the
gown
of the authentic patches on the very
peasant.
What
are the
handful of tiresome
facts,
To
of a real
truths you have gained, a
little
truths you have lost
flat
life
compared
and
to
the
spirit, light
and
air ?
The
assumption on which the theory and
tacit
practice of the so-called realist rests, is that if photo-
graphy, instead of yielding
little
proofs on paper in
black and white, could yield large proofs on canvas in

oils,
the occupation of the painter would be gone.
What
function
radical
of
misconception of the nature
art this
is,
becomes evident when we
paraphrase the same idea and apply

of letters.
Few would
it
in the region
be found to defend the proposi-
tion that a stenographic report of events

;is
and
and words
they occurred would constitute the highest literary
treatment of
I'k.ii
is
;i
given scene in
distinguished
;is
life.
literature
page of descrip-
from reporting when
the resources of language are employed with cunning
MODERN BEALISM
and mastery to convey, not
catalogue of facts, but
the result of the observation of
temperament.
individual
Ml
IN PAINTING.
these facts on an
Its value depends on the
degree of mastery with which the language
used,
is
and on the delicacy and range of the writer's personality,
and in no wise on the accuracy of the
facts
recorded.
Richter says somewhere that no artist can replace
different
periods of his
the work of the

that almost
portion
the same artist
not even
another, and
life.
One
himself,
at
characteristic
of
modern photo-realist
in painting is
any one of them could have painted
of the
work of any other without making
They
any appreciable discord of execution apparent.
from
the
first
with a technique which serves
them
are
all
equipped
It is
all.
Btyle
in
known
the
at
as la bonne peinture.
It differs
from
being a thing you can acquire, and I believe
even maintained, not only to be perfectible, but
is
to
have been, on several occasions, perfected.
Nothing
student of
oi
studios
equally, once for
it
work
<>F
is
more frequently brought home
modern painting than the truth that the
the salonnicr, the picture, that
the exhibition
of novelty
to the
and
is,
for the exhibition,
and interest
that
is
wears
strictly for the season.
born
its air
If
lie
MODERN REALISM
142
meet
it
TX PAINTING.
again in a house, or in the holocaust of a
retrospective exhibition, its date is stamped
with the accuracy of a page of Le

de
And whether
mode.
la
follet or
Le
upon
it
moniteur
a picture be asserted at the
date of its exhibition as advanced, or the contrary, as
daring or dull,
born of the exhibition,
is
if it
with the exhibition, and the brood to which

birth hold their
was
It
Joan
of
lapse of
the
life
conclusion
critics
seeing
Bastien-Lepage's
Exhibition of 1890, after a
that
falls
it
inevitably
prefer to
call
the
placing, there is
The drawing
out profundity or novelty of observation.

uninteresting,
mechanically
and
figure
is
the
obtrusive
Parisian schools of
under the
In the composition, or in what
neither grace nor strangeness.
is
gives
it
since its first appearance, to resist
heading of "machin."
modern
on
at the Paris
some years
dies
on the same tenure.
impossible,
Arc
it
execution
is
with-
is
The
colour
the
usual
square-brush-work
of
the
Dramatically, the leading
art.
not impressive or even lucid
and the help-
less introduction of the visionary figures
behind the
back of the rapt maid completes the conviction that

it
\\as
an error of judgment for a painter with the
limitations
saiictilied
of
Lepage
to
burden a touching and
legend with commonplace illustration.
MODEL'X REALISM IX PAINTING.
copy of so strange and interesting a subject
faithful
\
iii**.
Sarah Bernhardt cannot
the
altogether
delicacy of the
The format
profile.
Prince of
be a valuable
Wales evoked
much
bave looked at so
exquisitely spiritual
of the little panel portrait of the

in
the press the obviously
The ready
invited reference to Clouet.
writer cannot
as a single pearl in the neck-
one of Clouet's princesses.
lace of
To judge
bis
fail to
Lepage's portrait has surely missed
document, but
follow
143
of an
fairly
him on
to his
grandfather,
quite possible to see
manlike and
repose.
It
own ground.
the
at
same
Lepage
photographic
was
at
however, we must
artist,
In his
portrait of
exhibition,
at his best as a
copyist
of
was
it
work-
the same time possible to
from this picture straight to Manet's
fifre,
in
figure
and
turn
to his
bon bock, and thus to measure the gulf that separates

a
meritorious
workman from an
of the first rank.
No
obscuring this
and
gigantic
fact,
useful end can be gained

if,
in league with the
conspiracy of toleration,
of L.i^tien-Lepage as a master,
us for
inspired executant
Keene and
we
are
modern
to
speak
what terms are
Millet, for Whistler
by
and Degas
left
WALTBB SICKERT.
Chelsea, 1891.
A STUDY OF MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF.
10
Mother.]
Marie Bashkibtseff.
Portrait by Herself.)
A STUDY OF MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF.
THE
sunshine of a glorious October
brilliant
morning poured through the
tall
Marie Bashkirtseft's studio on
Rue
to the
my
last visit
This mellow light bathing her
brought them
canvasses
I
de Prony.
windows of
out
in
fullest
and
relief,
had never had such a favourable opportunity of
judging her work in
its entirety.
I was struck more
than ever by the vigour and vitality of these studies,

Bketches, pastels,
heat
of
mental
and pictures struck

production
between the
seventeen and four and twenty.

gallery
which runs along one
her fust studies from
much
life,
off at
a white
ages
Hanging above
side of the wall
of
the
were
which astonished Julian so
that he pronounced
them phenomenal; lure
were her numerous sketches showing the sincerity of

lici-
efforts
to be true to nature;
pictures full of individuality
and her finished
and power.
As the eye rested on these portraits where the key-
A STUDY OF
150
note of character had been so unmistakably struck,
on these bits of
on
city life in their shabbier aspects,
these Paris street children with faces so prematurely
sharpened or saddened, you became at once aware

that this artist
Her
was
chief object
was
a naturalist of the naturalists.

to seize life
to seize the flying
impression as she happened to see
it
to render
it
with unflinching faithfulness to nature without any
attempt at arrangement, composition, or beauty of

treatment.
'
Oh, to catch nature
Marie Bashkirtseff, as
sionism,
as
was
it
primitive
artist
wrestling
of
the
is
it
perhaps
who
the
This
'
!
spirit
with
cry
much
an archer, bow in hand
perhaps.
For these
Not
cry
the
of
and
rude
first
first
of
Impres-
labour
the
image of the lioness or painted the

of
of
cry
the
modelled
the
is
likeness
quite the
same,
early workers in clay or pig-
ments saw nature with the eyes
of children
those
visionary eyes to which the leaves of the trees, the

flowers of the field, the dogs
and horses and
and cows are as much part of the interminable

tale in
in
which they
more orthodox
live as the
stories.
more
cats
fairy-
fantastic figures
For these primitive
artists
looked at the world with the eyes of children, and
MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF.
though they looked at her with
151
wide-open eyes,
clear,
they could not help seeing her symbolically, seeing
men and
the analogy between
between beasts
beasts,
and plants, between the articulate and inarticulate

phases of nature, so that whatever they produced not
only stood for itself but for a host of subtly appre-
hended
insight into the
together
linked
affinities
by
imaginative
And
mystery of things.
in tracing
the development of this primitive style of art a little

further, in following
it
to its legitimate
into the loftiest forms of
seeing
that
it
Greek
art,
development
we cannot help
was the consummate flower of
archaic symbolism.
With
this
this difference, that while
Egyptian, Assyrian, and Indian artists invented the
most grotesque and fantastic forms to express the

wonder and mystery of the world, the Greeks tried to
find
outward expression for that archetype of beauty
which has as yet only existed in the mind of man.
And
faculty
its
nature, plus the
is
of
man, plus that master
which refuses and chooses, and which reaches
highest results by
what
mind
making
fresh combinations from
widely diffused in nature
secret of art.
that, surely, is the
This faculty of selection and concen-
tration, within the limits of
tional form,
some more
or less conven-
seems to belong to every manifestation
152
-1
STUDY OF
which can never under any circumstances be a
of art,
simple reproduction of nature.

since, as
Blake so pithily puts
the same tree a wise
man
How can it, indeed,

it
"A fool sees not
:
And we
sees " ?
question
whether any two people, any two painters would ever

see precisely the
same thing
the same
however
tree,
hard they might try to free themselves from the bias

of personality
or
would succeed in giving us an
any subject what-
identical pictorial representation of

soever.
For the
artist's
own mind, unlike
a photo-
graphic apparatus, would always intervene so as to

force
him
to see life
through the medium
of his
temperament.
Indeed, will not the circulation of the
artist's blood,
the pitch of his nerves, the thoughts
lie
lias
thought and the emotions he has
the beginning
into
account
of
consciousness,
as factors
in
picture
any individual painter's
For
this reason
can never be truly likened to a window
opening on nature unless, indeed,

window.
from
have to be taken
picture of a tree or any other object ?

a
felt
On
it
be a stained-glass
the contrary, the artist
for the time
being lends us his eyes to see nature with.
And
as
the eyes of a Titian or a Turner saw combinations
and harmonies of tones and tints whose magnificent

<ir<<i entirely
escapes the eyes of ordinary mortals,
it
MM! IE
IlASTIKTL'TSEEE.
L53
much
wiser to accept their interpretation than to
go into
hair-splitting discussions as to the precise
is
exactitude of their copy to a reality which
eternally
is
changing.
Take only the painters

French school
can w
of the
realistic
e not tell at a glance, in
through the Louvre, whether
it is
For whether the
of their peculiar individuality,

all
art expression
flavour
Btyle
is
are looking
world
according to the laws
and the preciousness of
seems precisely to consist in this rare
which the
outside himself.
we
realists like it or no, the
will reflect itself in their brains
going
nature according to
Corot, to Rousseau, or to Millet that

at ?
modern
artist's
self
impresses on nature
This priceless quality which we
call
as inseparable from the genuine artist as the
shape of his nose.
It clearly differentiates a peasant
woman by Millet from any ordinary peasant woman

we may chance on in a field, and is as marked in his
simple pourtrayal of rustic subjects as in the most
sublime compositions by Michael Angelo.
These few inadequate remarks may not be entirely

out of place
when speaking
our day; or of an artist

tive of
them.
of the aesthetic views of
who
For the new
is
peculiarly representa-
scientific spirit
which
lias
revolutionized our views of nature, has also penetrated
A STUDY OF
154
the realms of literature and

to
art,
and impelled
artists
attempt a perfectly unprejudiced reproduction of
For the present
life.
realism,
which
loves
this has led
dwell
to
them
grim
to a
exclusively
on the
material side of existence, scouting the romantic and

ideal as figments of
man's fancy
to
be relegated into
the limbo of unrealistics along with the dragons and

griffins of
which
the world's childhood.
has
produced
one-sided novels
de Maupassant
of
may
the
De
what
extremely powerful
Zola, and
Goncourt,
also be studied in the
the realistic French

insistence on
The same movement

but
Guy
w orks of
r
painters in their almost fierce

is
natural even to the pitch of
repulsiveness.
Impressionism
was
in
the
air
when
Marie
Bashkirtseff entered on her artistic career in 1877.

It
would amount to a truism to give any fresh account
of her birth, parentage,
and early
life
at
this time.
All the world has read her famous journal.
All the
world knows that she was born at Poltava, in the
south of llussia, in I860.

separated
after
That her parents were
few years of marriage; that her
mother and aunt came to the West of Europe with

the two children
thai
Paul and Marie, and a cousin Dina
tiny travelled about after the fashion of their
MARIE BASEKIBTSEFF.
down
kind, afterwards settling
on
in
As Marie
Paris.
fashion.
But her
Nice, and later
often bitterly laments, her
on
was carried
cducit ion
iirst at
L55
faculty
in
rather
desultory
acquiring knowledge
for
was so surprising, her intellect so extraordinary, that

-lie
became an admirable linguist, a skilled musician,
splendid singer, a fair mathematician with a rapidity
that
seemed
to
amount
to intuition.
observation had probably been

that she
much
saw and heard on their
early opportunity of seeing the
developed by
museums and
of
all
She had an
travels.
master works of
Rome, and was an
time in Florence and

frequenter of
Her powers
all
indefatigable
picture galleries.
At the
age of fifteen, her judgment was already so independent that she had the audacity to speak of the " cardboard pictures of Raphael" and the " stupid
She had never as
Venuses of Titian."
Paris,
mixed with
Ntudios, yet in
many
artists,
if
glorious
yet lived in
or heard the talk of the
respects she seems already a full-
fledged art student, with the last phrase of the
on her
lips.
hour
Already she sought in pictures that scru-
pulous resemblance to nature which was her chief aim
when she herself took

interested in art,
chief place
in
it
her
to painting.
But though deeply
did not at that time occupy the
thoughts.
Music attracted her
STUDY OF
156
more, and the desire to be a singer was her greatest
In
ambition.
fact,
tage of an embarras
gifts,
and
make
a choice.
she laboured under the disadvancle
richesses in
regard to her natural
several years she found
for
it
difficult to
However, one day in October, 1877, there entered
M.
Julian's
now famous
Panoramas two very

panied by a young
head to
foot, as if
life-school in the Passage des
tall ladies, all in black,
girl
Julian
himself,
dressed in pure white from
she were a
strange and striking trio
accom-
lily
made
This
of the field.
quite a sensation.
M.
with his happy picturesqueness of
phrase in describing the
first
appearance of Marie
his
studio,
spoke of her as une
blancheur
something
bright
and
seemed
to
Bashkirtseff
in
have
in
little
common
work-a-day routine of studio
life.
startling,
which
with the severe

Nevertheless, she
had come, accompanied by her mother and aunt,

be entered as a pupil
and in the
letter
to
which she
brought him from an eminent physician, he found

this curt
word by way of introduction: "I have sent
you a monster."
All this was very unlike the usual order of things.
was there and then settled that Marie Bashkirt-
But
it
seff
was
to attend his classes,
and every morning found
MABIE BASHKIBTSEFF.
her <luly at place, working
upon
it.
At
first,
away as
if
her
i;,7
life
depended
her master took this wish to paint
the caprice of a spoilt child, which would soon
for
pass
when confronted by
the difficulties of execution.
Before long, however, he recognized his mistake; he

felt
that she
which
lifted
among her
her
was a power; that there was something

her out of the ranks and placed her apart
Something which gave
fellow pupils.
first efforts,
to
however crude and tentative, a vigour
and spontaneity which were truly astonishing.
And
he discovered, too, that so far from playing at art she
was in deadly earnest.

iu
Instead of being less regular
her attendance than the other art students, she
Hung
herself into her
of an enthusiast.
work with the passionate zeal
Morning, noon, and night found
her either at her easel, or else taking private lessons

in
anatomy and modelling, or haunting
galleries
always,
on the
alert
Indeed, Julian found her a
to
little
sales
and picture
improve
herself.
monster of energy,
of talent, of ambition, of concentrated will.
Whatever
she took into her head to do, she did and accomplished
the seemingly impossible.
In
a surprisingly short time she
elements of
art,
had mastered the
and her studies from the nude were
considered wonderful
by her masters.
By
the in-
158
STUDY OF
tensity of her attention

to her native
endowment she managed
of study
years
to
reading, which was
her
all
and fever of work joined

after only
produce a picture of a
hung
characteristic
in the Salon.
qualities
two
woman
It evinces
masterly
vigour of
drawing, and a vivid and striking manner of painting
human
faces.
Her extreme
sensitiveness to impres-
sions gave her a peculiar facility for catching like-
and hringing out the salient and personal
nesses
traits in
her models.
After some few years devoted to painting in the

studio,
Marie BashkirtsefT hegan to
about her work as a colourist.

her
own standard
In the midst of
autumn
as to plunge her into
fits
of despair.
this profound dissatisfaction, in the
of 1881, she
awaken
unhappy
It fell so far helow
went
to Spain,
seemed to awaken to a new sense

to
feel very
and there she
for the first time
to the full, glorious significance of colour
in the painter's sense.
In reading those pages

scribe the picturesque
of
her journal which de-
Moorish palaces, the gloomy
Gothic cathedrals, the dark, crooked streets with their

groups of gipsies and the treasures of art stored away
in
museums and
churches,
it
seems as
if
they were
illumined by a mellower light than the rest of the
M.
HIE BASIIKIBTSE1
5!
Velasquez and Goya opened her eyes, and she
book.
"raised herself on tiptoe," as she sa)
Day
method.
of their unique
secret
s,
to master the
day she
after
steeped herself in those glowing canvasses, and on
her return to Paris she began to reap the benefit
Soon afterwards she
of this enthusiastic absorption.
painted
The Umbrella,
in
which she made a great
leap forward.
Her method and

definitely in the
now
style of painting
same school
to
placed her
which Bastien-Lepage
belonged, or of which he was the master.

school which said
our pictures.
"
We
will
Let us paint
let
light just as
The
and skylights."
was the
the open air into
of doors, not the artificial studio effects
aspects
It
Pic in Air
it
is
out
from north
movement
of
the painters was precisely the same as that which
Zola inaugurated in literature.

the citadel of art
ticular
men and
artists
At the head of
the
by storm
at
It
was nature taking
least,
what these par-
understood by nature.
this school stood Bastien-Lepage,
young painter who so early became what the
French
call
Chef d'Ecole.
from the country
his
His
pictures taken fresh
Haymakers, and Harvesters,
and Potato Gatherers, and Rustic Lovers

Bashkirtseff with
boundless
delight.
filled
"He
Marie
is
not
A STUDY OF
1G0
only a painter," she
metaphysician,
ologist,
"he
says,
a poet, a psych-
is
creator."
His
perfect
imitation of nature, the quality which ranked highest
was beyond
in her judgment,
Many
of the
French
critics
But she had
of Bastien.
all
praise in her eyes.

called her the pupil
of course never been his
actual pupil, having been trained in quite a different

school,
and
called
so,
it
always gave her
But
in
much annoyance
of the
spite
striking
to be
contrast
between the origin and early associations of these

two young painters they were singularly alike in their
love of realism, their early fame, and premature end.
Look, on the one hand,

of
Tartar nobles, with
at
Marie, this offspring
savage instincts lying like
half-tamed wild beasts in the background of her consciousness.
and
serfs,
She was descended from owners
and the instinct of command, the pride
power, the love of
"
two
incisive
mothers,"
"
phrase,
to please her, or
pieces
to
all
of
things splendid became part of
She was the
her inheritance.
her
of lands
idol
of two
women,
who, in her master Julian's
would
have burned
down
Paris
had themselves cut into a thousand
satisfy
one of
her
caprices."
had endowed her with such lavish
gifts
Nature
that her
very talents turned into a stumbling-block, threaten-
MABIE BASBEIBTSEFF.
ing to divert her
efforts
Music,
sculpture,
literature,
the goal
cessively
of
these
an end
ever,
arts
the
of
her ambition
meaning
to
How-
art,
of work, of the artist's
to her she
he
is
began to forget
Her
in the things she did.
her love and delight in
mastery over
steadily with her increasing

difficulties.
suc-
and each one
absorption in what
became familiar
more and more
devotion
were
one burning desire for fame.
simple and disinterested
herself
stage,
channels.
was in her eyes only the means to
as the deep
fashioning,
many
into too
the
161
its
She says truly: "Outside of
grew
it,
technical
my
art,
which I commenced from caprice and ambition, which

I continued out of vanity, and which I
outside of this passion
is
for
it
is
now worship
a passion
there
nothing."
and
with many outcries,
against the traces Marie Bashkirtseff had
Little by little
kic kings
begun
That
it is
to discover that there is
to
him only
is
given
who
true,
no royal road
is
to art.
ready, also, to give
up much.
She found out that however great her
natural
might
gift
be,
it
would remain a diamond
in the rough, unless she regularly applied herself to
the task of acquiring technical mastery.
After some
years' intense but interrupted application she

11
would
162
STUDY OF
have admitted that no work of
can be
first-rate talent
produced without the expenditure of as much courage,

perseverance, and self-control as might have
Schumann
For, as
hero.
truly says
"
made
The laws
a
of
morality are also the laws of art."
What
Lepage.
came
was that of Bastien-
a widely different lot
He, the son
of people
who
of
French peasant
are perhaps the
existence
industrious class in
most
proprietors,
thrifty
and
people punctual to
their daily task as the sun himself in his rising and
down-going
tenacity
wanting
of
clinging to the
and
rocks
little,
|soil
trees
they
till
working
asking no joy of
with the
much and
except rest.
life
Just as Marie's parents lived apart in painful disunion, those of Bastien were united by the tenderest
family affection.
grandfather
old
The shrewd,
sort
of
caustic, clear-headed
village
Nestor
the
thoughtful father, the devoted mother, were helpful

influences which unobtrusively helped in developing
Bastien's faculties.
as
began to draw as naturally
another child learns to
noticing his
some
five.
its
He
talk;
aptitude, very wisely
and
set
his
him
father,
to copy
object or other every evening from the age
Country
life,
with
its
<>l
primitive simplicity and
regular succession of daily tasks, sank deeply
if
MAL'IE BASIIKIirrsEFF.
unconsciously into
the
tlic little fellow's
L63
mind:
it
sank as
seed does, without question or self-analysis, to
bide its time in
when
vigorous
silence
and
shoot up strong' and
the appointed hour had come. Bastien
probably never asked himself whether he should be

a painter, a poet,
He
a psychologist, or metaphysician.
became one very
And
painting.
likely because
he could not help
I suppose he never asked himself
whether in his pursuit
of
art
he was sacrificing
something that might be more precious.
and enchanted by the
was not dazzled

Italian cities
flirtations.
and Carnival
festivities
But he
sight
of
and ball-room
Toil and hardship were the rule of
life
around him, and in his love for art he was willing to

undergo any amount of
express
trains from
Instead of rushing in
it.
Berlin
to
St.
Petersburg and
from St. Petersburg to Paris, he remained stationary

in
his
low-roofed
same
country home, seeing the
round of occupation going on year after year

Labourer following the plough
mowing grass with the
light
the
the haymakers in the
beating on their sun-
burnt faces, or stretched in the shade of full-leaved

trees in the luxury of
orange-coloured corn
with the
cattle
repose
reapers reaping the
summer evening
coming home
to
in the village,
their
stalls,
as
164
their
STUDY OF
shadows deepen on the bright green meadows.
Such were the impressions which graved themselves

always afresh on the lad's receptive memory, to turn
themselves one day into those pictures of rural
life
which may truly be called "the harvest of a quiet

eye."
Though Bastien-Lepage's
lot
who
had
to
make
his living by turning post-office clerk while studying

at the
Ecole des Beaux Arts
harder than that

reality
Marie Bashkirtseff,
of
more favourable
artist.
For,
formed
by
with
Goethe,
develops in seclusion."
the
so
it
much
was in
development of an
the
to
according to
contact
may appear
" Character
world,
while
is
talent
Marie Bashkirtseff, with her
penetrating intelligence, was quite aware of this. She,

for
whom
nothing was ever sufficiently
fine,
would
sometimes quite seriously envy her fellow-students'

their poverty, their
humble way
hard work shared in
common
their cares
and
a Paris garret.
of
in
life,
stern necessity seemed to lend dignity to their art
work, while hers was so often patted on the back by
her fashionable friends as the pastime of a charming
young M<> uridine.

I was particularly fortunate this year in finding
in Marie Bashkirtseff' s studio a picture by Bastien-
.V.
/,'//;
/;.
SHEIBTSEFF.
165
Lepage, L'Annociation au Bergers, which
1875 to compete
In
interesting
to"
for the Prix de
compare these two
lvome.
artists
It
in
was
their
The same uncompromising
likeness in unlikeness.
realism applied in different ways, and the
and pinning
of catching expression
painted
lie
it
same power
down
as you
would a butterfly without losing any of the delicate
This picture of a
shades.
treated
istic
" far-off, divine event " is
by l>astien-Lepage in a surprisingly natural-
way, and yet without sacrificing that mystical
element which
aspects
of
life.
sometimes belongs to the simplest
Here
is
none of that conventional
treatment of religious subjects against which Marie

rebelled in those " old
Here was
dusky pictures in the Louvre."
real atmosphere, there
were real shepherds,
rough, homely, unsophisticated men, brown

soil
and
as
the
yet, in spite of the reality, this picture
gave
you a sense of unfamiliar awe.

twilight before the fire
to
lit
in the open air, they
seem
have been more or less overcome by drowsiness.
The
lias
first,
an old man, an expressive, rugged
bowed his head
before the angel
in
adoration
and
is
figure,
kneeling
whose sudden apparition has taken
the shepherds by surprise.

tlie
Sitting there in the
Bewildered and amazed
second leans forward with gaping mouth and
A STUDY OF
166
outstretched hands as
to assure himself
if
Hardly able
the reality of what he sees.
himself from sleep the third one
The
life.
supernatural.
sits
to
rouse
huddled together
It is as true as can be to simple
in the distance.
shepherd
by touch of
It
apparition itself has
nothing
might be purely human with only
the angel light of tenderness beaming from the face.
The
grace of the figure
feminine "
as
shepherds
the
distance
the
suggestive of the " eternally
is
celestial
way
messenger shows
Bethlehem
to
visible
by the luminous haze encircling
in
it
the
the
like
halo.
This picture with

idyl of
shepherd
its effect of
It
life.
gloaming light
is
an
breathes that simplicity of
nature which invests the calling of the herdsman, the
ploughman, the mower, the reaper, with the poetry of

primitive existence.
I shall never forget the impres-
sion once produced on
me by
Highland shepherd
and his flock slowly winding along the

an upland moor.
The long
solitary road of
white line of the wavering
sheep with that sombre figure of the solitary shepherd
was thrown into
relief
of the barren hillsides.

to carry one
by the smouldering purple

It
was a scene which seemed
back to remote ages.
mythic East might the flocks
Even
so in the
and their shephenis
MABIE BASIIKIBTSEFF.
1G7
have passed along similar roads in the vasi silence of
deepening twilight.
given to what
is
This same feeling of nearness
dimly remote appeared to
me one
of
the chief attractions of Bastien-Lepage's work.
As Bastion by the country,

inspired by the town.
kirtsefl
squares of Paris became

harvest-fields
had been
to
Marie Bash-
so is
The
boulevards and
her what the hay and
to
Lepage.
Her
imbued with the atmosphere of Paris
pictures were
those
delicate,
pearly greys which strike one as its keynote of colour.
She caught that misty light which you see clinging

to
masses of architecture as you look from one of the
bridges along the blue-grey Seine to the picturesque

old Cite with the iron-grey towers of
outlined against
of roofs
the
Dame
Notre
clouded azure above.
Effects
and clusters of buildings half seen through
the confusing haze of early morning

walls enlivened
by black and
drab -coloured
wdiite placards
flashy tints of rival advertisements
and the
narrow streets
with masses of shadow emphasizing the value of light
on wall and pavement
these
became the dominant
note in Marie BashkirtsefFs work as a colourist.
Her
day
life
subjects, too, are usually taken from the every-
of the
French
every street corner.
capital as
The
you may meet
it
round
blouse of the artisan, the
168
STUDY OF
cap of the milliner, the rags of the gamin appeared
adapted to Marie Bashkirtseff for pictorial
better
treatment than the thousand freaks of fashion with
which society annually delights
As
painter
or
Batignolles
to astonish the world.
preferred
she
Avenue
the
Wagram
Boulevard
the
Champs
The
faces of
to
Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne.
de
weary people sitting on public benches casually seen

in passing or caught sight of across the counter of a
shop had hints and suggestions of meaning which she

missed in the sleek features of the swells
met
she
in the drawing-rooms of her friends.
So
it
happens that instead of painting the
neat, carefully brushed children marshalled
bonnes in the Pare
the
whom
pretty,
by stately
Monceaux, she chose in preference
unkempt ragamuffins running wild
She found more scope there
in the streets.
for the exercise of that
scrupulous and powerful realism which was the secret

of her strength.
In the Jean and Jacques, The Girl
with the Umbrella,

dered
some
children.
so
of
The
pathetic
in
Le Meeting,
she has vividly ren-
the incidents in the town

faces of these little boys
their
life
and
of
girls,
premature maturity, in their
shrewd or sad or pathetic outlook on the world, are

extraordinary in their truth to
life.
With most
of
[By Marit
BashkirtsqtF,
MARIE BASEKIBTSEFF.
171
the childhood taken out of their childish
they look at us,
we consider them
if
where experience has

innocence
streets,
already
features,
well, with
taken
eyes
the place
of
the experience taught them by the teeming
those hooks of the poor, for ever unfolding
fresh pages before their inquisitive eyes.
They cannot be
called beautiful, these pictures, in
the sense that fine forms, nobility of outline, charm

of expression are beautiful.
vivid,
quick with
clutching
the
life.
big,
Take
But they
that
gamp-like
are interesting,
little
piteous figure
while
umbrella,
she
draws her battered shawl more closely around her.
With what
a look of stolid, inarticulate suffering she
seems looking through the rain on the
that
life
You
dark and dreary as the prospect before her.
is
see
the hair actually blown back from the forehead, and
one mesh has got caught round the handle of the

umbrella as she meets the force of the wind with
tight-shut lips
a humble subject, but remarkable
the solidity of its handling.
Indeed there
is
for
a Hol-
beinesque quality in the vigour of the drawing and

the truth of the pose.
Jean
et
Jacques, the picture of two boys, of seven
and four years
old, is
an equally striking work.
stand so naturally on their legs, these
little
They
fellows,
STUDY OF
172
their attitudes are so unstudied, their expressions so
admirably true to
life.
The
eldest has already that
responsible look which the offspring of the poor acquire

so early.
With his cap
at the
back of his head, a shabby
umbrella tacked under his right arm, he steps along in

his
clumsy boots with the resolute
air of a little
the handkerchief tied cravat-wise, but
all
man
on one
side,
the leaf stuck between the lips as a make-believe cigar,
show Marie Bashkirtseff's

ways of his kind.
close
observation of the
With one hand he
grips
way
unwilling Jacques, dawdling obstinately on his
to
he pensively
school, while with the other in his pocket
fingers the seductive marbles that invite
the
him
Le Meeting, her most important work,
to play.
powerfully painted, vividly realized picture.
group of Paris gamins met in council
a fine,
is
Just a
a street
at
corner, discussing the use to which a piece of string is

to be applied,
with the
excitement of stockbrokers
buying and selling shares on the steps of the Bourse.

It is a
triumph of realism.
limbs are informed with
moment
their legs
quite naturally.
life
The
;
it
faces speak, the
seems as
and arms might begin
There
is
if
to
any
move
nothing conventional about
these figures, so fresh in their unstudied attitudes and

gestures.
These
faces,
bathed in the pale
air of a
MAIUE
BASTIKUITSI'IFF.
much
Talis back street, breathe quite as
and palings
discoloured walls
as the
How
ground.
how
pert,
\T-\
of town
life
in the back-
how wide-awake
Parisian,
they are, with their thin, sharp-edged features and their

gimlet eyes
The
is
which allow nothing to escape them.
biggest of the six, with his back to the spectator,
eloquently holding forth to his intently listening
may one day
comrades, even as he
a different
hold forth to quite
kind of audience, when, after due graduation
in the philosophy of rags,
he shall begin to practise
the lessons which the stony streets have taught him.
Quite
different
lesson from
that
which Bastien-
Lepage's shepherds have learnt on the

the
hung
the
the
grey
execution of this picture,
honour
in a place of
extremely good.
in
The
wooded Meuse.
There
at the
Luxembourg,
is
a genuine feeling for colour
is
sombre tones
and
hillsides of
nature of the subject.
The
in
harmony with
open-air effect
is
happily caught, and the faces stand out in brilliant

light.
The powerful
realism,
scrupulous technique,
and excellence of the painting, make a great success

of
Le Meeting, and
it
is
a performance which at once
secured a wide recognition for Marie
Bash kirt self, not
only in artistic circles, but from the general public.
Marie loved to
recall
Balzac's questionable delini-
A STUDY OF
174
tion that the genius of ohservation is almost the whole
human
of
her, since
genius.
it
was natural
might
especially successful
as a portrait
equally good in her
the contrast of
many
that
was
painter, for
she
likeness
with
She seems
it.
men and women and
to
children,
of her heads showing the range
Her
and variety of her power.

for
she
sitter's
the hloom of nature yet fresh upon
able
should please
therefore,
expect,
has a knack of catching her
me
it
was the most conspicuous of her many
As we
gifts.
It
portraits are notice-
absence of family likeness which
often seen even in the works of great painters, as
is
if
the artist had some ideal head before his mind's eye
to
which he was unconsciously trying to assimilate
the faces of his models.
Marie
a
BashkirtsefT's
safeguard
in
that
respect.
are singularly individual,

at a glance.
impressionable
her
wns
likenesses
and we realize their character
Look, for example,
Parisian swell, in
All
nature
at her portrait of a
irreproachable evening dress and
white kid gloves, sucking his silver-headed cane, with

a simper that shows all his white teeth, and then at
the head
and bust of the Spanish
from
at the prison in
life
embodiment
Granada.
convict, painted
Compare
of fashionable vacuity with
this
that
face,
MA Bl E
Ji.
SEEIB TS E
I '!
17
whose brute-like eyes haunt you with their sadly

stunted
What
look.
observation
is
shown
in
the
painting of those heavily-bulging lips, which express
weakness rather than wickedness of disposition
in
those coarse hands engaged in the feminine occupa-
and white stocking.
tion of knitting a blue
Again.
take those three heads expressive of different kinds of
And
laughter.
nothing
is
perhaps more
to paint laughing or singing faces
difficult
mouth
the open
than
being apt to give a foolish, strained, and unnatural
But Marie BashkirtsefT
look to the face.
evinces great
The
in painting a natural elfect of laughter.
skill
baby face
smiling boneless
little
is
delightfully
study of an infant, and equally good
realistic
of the pert little girl
is
that
whose mouth bubbles over with
Much more knowing is the

young woman with the stylish
a child's artless laugh.
wicked laughter of the
hat and bunch of violets fastened coquettishly in her

sealskin cape.
body
at
She surely must be laughing
an
of
It
Marie BashkirtsefT' s
Salon, and
was
her
all
amusement.
admirably painted one,
Dina.
some-
some lovelorn swain, whose antics make
her features twitch with
One
at
first
is
first
that
work
portraits,
of
her
exhibited
and
cousin
at
the
shows a young woman with her elbow
A STUDY OF
176
Her
resting on a table and her face in her hand.
gown
loose
and
of light bine damask, white muslin fichu
golden hair harmonize very happily
pale
soft,
The
arm.
and
book,
the
of
flowers
delicate flesh tints
admirable
are
the
in
and
tone,
the
beside
buxom
of a
the
white
the
with the green plush of the table-cover,
bare
blonde
extremely
face
It has the unmistakable Tartar type
characteristic.
in the low brow, slightly oblique eyes, flattened nose,
and broad
lips
indolence.
Here there
charm which
is
with their expression of sensuous
so
if
in the portrait
This sketchy portrait looks
the painting had been done at the
The round
The
master.
seem dashed
is
stroke.
in with the facility of a
face sparkles at us from the canvas as
about to utter a witticism.
figure
first
hat, the well-fitting clothes, the plants in
the background
if
nothing of that vivacious
marked an element
of Mdlle. de Canrobert.
as
is
all
of treatment
life,
all
This cleverly-paintod
movement, and in
and freedom of pose
its
style
suggestive of
is
Mr. Whistler's manner.
Her
in
th(3
It is
portrait
last
of herself, palette in
year of her
life, is
a three-quarters length,
hand,
painted
extremely interesting.
and she
is
standing
looking straight in front of her with a harp a
little
MARIE BASHKIBTSEFF.
behind to the
She
left.
is
done
in
177
that becoming
black studio uniform with the broad white

j
ibot
fits
frills
and
which has been so often described, and the gown
as if
in
Her features are more

than we know them from the
her forehead.
over
and
refined
blonde
on the top of the head, ends
hair, thickly coiled
fringe
Her deep
moulded on the body.
spiritual
photographs.
It
seems as
of death
had already
and lined
it
down
if
the invisible presence
on her
laid a finger
to a greater delicacy
fair
body
and had given
that expression of questioning pathos to the profound
wide-open eyes.
It
is
portraits,
not
here
possible
admirable
as
to
many
enumerate
them
of
all
are.
her
Her
likenesses of Mdlle. Armandine, of a Parisienne, of
Prince Bojidar Karegeorgevitch, of Georgeth, and of
Mdme. Paul
ail of
Bashkirtseff, have the
same convincing
intense realism which she adored in Bastien-
Lepage's
works
of
that
The
kind.
enthusiastic
words, full of light and colour, in which she describes

his portraits,
to her
might
own without
Not
word.
many an
if
There
instance he applied
exaggeration.
to be overlooked are
and townscapes,
a
in
some
of her landscapes
one might be allowed to coin such

is
an extremely good
12
little
picture
STUDY OF
178
Rue Ampere.
of a portion of a street near the
ground gives
plot of fenced-in building
unfinished look.
The houses and
through
morning mist,
pale
a dismally^
it
walls behind, seen
bathed in an
are
atmosphere, whose grey tones are delicately touched
Two
with pink.
in
rest
the
heavy cart-horses are standing

of waste ground,
bit
which a flame of
fire
As
is
just a finely
of a landscape in
amid the general dimness.
felt, finely
and
characteristic
of
shoots up from a rubbish heap
a spot of brilliant colour
This
in the centre
at
atmosphere
full of
autumn
rendered impression.
is
the study
long, straight avenue,
with the look of trees about to lose their foliage.
Wan
their
clouds,
waning
tones in
light,
withering leaves blending
harmony
of grey
mournfulness of the misty avenue

the
A mood
air.
corresponds to a
mood
of the
human
The
a feeling in
caught which
mind.
The
sense
and impending death seems
to
from the canvas, as from some actual pre-
sence, which though unseen,
is
cannot help thinking that the

by
grey.
is like
of nature has been
of desolation, decay,
breathe
in
some subtle process, have
canvas.
How
identified
herself
intensely
with
none the
artist's
literally
Marie
this
less there. I
own
state must,
passed into her
Bashkirtseff
picture
is
had
shown by
MABIE BASBKIBTSEFP.
Julian's
painted
IT*.*
remark on meeting her just
Without knowing the
it.
alter she
What have you
Your eyes look
been doing with yourself?
she had
subjeci
been at work upon, he exclaimed, "
had
full
of the
mists of autumn."
have only picked out the most important of her
works here, but there are many more

original
sketches,
little
studies of
bold
all
designs,
with
kinds,
always a characteristic touch of expression.
There
is
that dare-devil sketch of a nude model
on a chair looking
sitting astride
between the
lips of
The
veyed by the contrast of this
the skeleton,
which she has stuck a pipe while
waiting for the artist.
fresh
at
sardonic
fair
humour con-
young woman
in her
exuberance of form facing the skeleton with
challenging
audacity
attitude
young
for
especially good, too, as
is
an unparalleled piece of
girl
to have painted.
It
is
an arrangement of colour, and
shows perhaps more originality of invention than

anything else this
and Line
artist did.
The Fisher with Bod
an interesting study
is
oi a
with the deep blue sea-water below.

least,
of
there
The
grossed
is
brown Nicois
And
last,
not
the unfinished sketch for the picture
Street by which she was so completely en-
only
few weeks before
her death.
The
A STUDY OF
180
background of houses, the bench with the people

back to back in various attitudes expressive
sitting
or despair
of weariness, destitution,
one
with Ids
head hidden by his arm leaning on the back of the

seat,
another with crossed legs staring straight before
him with the look
of one for
whom
private resting-place than this
there
these half-finished
all
even when only consisting of a few scratches,
figures,
But when
are as true to every-day life as can be.
preliminary
the
all
all
studies
for
this
characteristic
when the canvas had been
picture were done,
and
no more
is
was ready, the
artist
placed
found but one thing
missing, and that, alas, was herself!
Though
kirtseff is
all
the work accomplished by Marie Bash-
strictly
of her last years
The
subject
beside
women
was
was
tomb
the
not
as
modern and
realistic,
the dream
to paint a great religious picture.
to
be
the two Maries
of Christ.
mourning
She imagined these
they had hitherto been represented
by the old masters, but as forlorn outcasts, wayworn
and weary, the

si
mined of
all
"Louise Michels
pharisaic,
"
of
respectable
their
folk.
were to embody the utmost depth of love and
Her
given
time,
They
grief.
descriptions of this picture that was to be, as

in
her journal,
are
highly
suggestive
an<3
The
poetical.
MARIE BASHKIBTSEFF.
L8]
women
one standing,
figures of these
the other in a sitting posture
The woman on
violence
as
statue,
Browning's
in
the ground abandoning herself to the
unrestrained
of
as
rigid
have shown
and attitude different phases of sorrow.
pose
their
would
line,
if
" I tell
mourning;
in
the
confirmation
you hopeless
other
Mrs.
of
grief
as
pas-
is
Only a few inadequate sketches, however,
sionless."
are left of this pictorial vision in
moon was
described
which the crescent
as floating in
an ensanguined
sunset sky above a waste dark with the coming night.
This word-picture never took shape in
But
colour.
it
possibilities to
artist
And
line
and
haunts you with a suggestion of
lofty
be reached by Marie Bashkirtseff as an
had she only
lived to carry out her conceptions.
as the poet declares
sweeter than any that

this
"songs unheard"
we may ever
hear, so
to
it is
with
unpainted picture as compared to the painted
ones;
for,
remarkable as her work
is, it is
to a great
extent remarkable as having been done by so young

girl after
even
!><>
only a few years of study.
It is as a promise
more than a performance that
it
claims our
admiration.
As we
to
the
already know, Marie Bashkirtseff belongs
modern French school
of naturalists,
more
1S2
STUDY OF
particularly to that branch
of
which Bastien-
of
it
But her
Lepage was the most representative man.

work
is
not exclusively French.
There
There
pronounced Russian element.
is
is
in
a
it
also a
marked
between her work and that of other
race -likeness
eminent Russian painters and novelists.
Matthew
Arnold's definition of the Russian nature in his article
on Count Leo Tolstoi might with very
little alteration
be applied to Marie Bashkirtseff herself.

nature," he says, " as
novel,
it
shows
"
itself in the
Russian
Russian
seems marked by an extreme sensitiveness, a
consciousness most quick and acute, both for what the
man's
experiencing and also for what others in
self is
him
contact with
are thinking
relief to his sensitiveness in
and
feeling.
He
finds
letting his perceptions
have perfectly free play, and in recording their reports

with perfect
fidelity.
The
sincereness with which the
reports are given has even something childlike and
touching.
."
This was ever Marie Bashkirtseff 's paramount aim,

both as a painter and writer, to make a perfectly
faithful report of nature, of
is
external to
it
to
human
nature and what
give a living picture of gesture
and manner as well as of thought and feeling

short, to produce
human documents.
in
Her mind and
MABIE BASHKIBTSEFF,
temperament, happily
For the
times.
pressions and
its
genius
horn
(as
for
touch with the
in
specially Russian
become the mark of the
And Marie
were
for her,
L88
alertness to
im-
recording them has also
latest
phase of European
Bashkirtseff took to
it
as
to the
if
indeed she was), rather than
art.
manner
imitation of
in
the modern French style, or of Bastien-Lepage in

particular.
In realizing
how
it
this
dominant
had fared with
one wonders
quality,
this impressionable artist
if,
instead of being surrounded by Parisian influences,
she had lived in her native land, the South of Russia.
Supposing she, with her intense

bibed those primitive aspects of
receptivity,
life still
amid the remoteness of the Steppe
had im-
to be found
Faithful to
what lay around her, Marie has painted dreary houses

blurred by mist, waifs and strays of the Paris boulevards, unlovely children in unlovely rags.
who blames her preference
for
what
does not do so without cause.
why she does not

is
is
critic
ugly and sordid
But when he asks
paint the elegances by which she
surrounded, she replies on her part,
shall I find
The
k
'
Where, then.
any movement, any of that savage and
primitive liberty, any true expression ?
"
That natural movement and primitive
lil
erty
she
A STUDY OF
184
But
could certainly not expect in Paris high-life.
she might have found
Ukraine
the
mixture of ugliness
its
it
in
without ad-
she might have been inspired by
coquettish villages gleaming white amid orchards
by the robust and handsome peasantry

picturesque
their
models a
national
realist like herself
would have had
from in those well-shaped peasant
clad in
still
What
garb.
girls,
splendid
to paint
whose move-
ments had never been hampered by anything more

artificial
in the
way
of clothes than an embroidered
chemise and a petticoat reaching no further than the

ankles.
the
Here she would
" savage
and primitive
longed for preserved in
and village
calls
it,
" variegated
love with nature
opportunities for
id
more
which her soul
old Cossack custom
so in
the aspects of
of the
"that green and golden ocean" as Gogol
descent tints."
;ii
liberty "
many an
Still
rite.
have met something of
nature in the boundless expanse
primitive
Steppe,
still
colour
possibilities,
by an
What a virgin soil

What new types
variety
for
an
What
of
iri-
artist in
splendid
the expression of beauty in form
Perhaps
but
infinite
it
it
is
idle to speculate
seems as
if
on such
Marie Bashkirtseff
might have produced work of a much higher order

had
her astonishing gift for
recording
impressions
MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF,
found
more
impressions
record
had she
lived
pictorially
in
attractive
to
an atmosphere bathed
in
an ampler light, amid a population
still
partial to the
However
display of brilliant colours in their dress.

that might have been will never be
There
is
known now.
a passage in her Journal where, speaking of
the sacrifices which art exacts, she says she has given
up more
for
it
than Benvenuto Cellini when he burn
his costly furniture
she gave.
is
To
indeed,
it
was her
which
life itself
quote her own striking words: " Work
a fatiguing process, dreaded yet loved by line and
powerful natures,
if
who
frequently succumb to
it.
For
the artist does not fling himself into his work as
unhesitatingly as Curtius did into the chasm at his

feet, or
as the soldier leaps into the breach, and
when there he does not
toil
miner beneath the earth,
if
with the energy of the

if,
in short, he stays to
consider difficulties instead of overcoming them like
those lovers of fairyland

difficulties
to
win
who triumph
their
princesses,
over ever fresh

his
work
will
remain unfinished and die still-born in the studio.
may
The
general public
who
are of us will find in these lines a stimulating
lesson, a comfort,
Marie
not understand, but those
and an encouragement."
BashkirtsefFs
work, unfortunately
for
as,
186
.4
was
left
STUDY OF
unfinished, but
the studio.
it
lias
not died still-born in
Jt is astonishingly alive.
day than on the day
it
More
alive to-
was painted, and resembles
that plant of basil which throve so luxuriantly, rooted

in
dead man's brain.
For the energies
of her
glowing vitality are now alive in her pictures.

I
subjoin here a complete
works
1.
list
of
Marie Bashldrt serf's
M \kii:
i
Bashkir] -im.
.in, r a
Photograph.)
MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF.
49.
L89
190
111.
STUDY OF MABIE BASHK1RTSEFF.
STlje
regain Preg0,
UNWIN BROTHERS,
CHILWORTH AND LONDOK.
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501 321

André, T. Clausen, G. Sickert, W. Blind, M. Jules Bastien-Lepage and His Art. A Memoir (1892)

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André, T. Clausen, G. Sickert, W. Blind, M. Jules Bastien-Lepage and His Art. A Memoir (1892)

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o

JULES BASTIEN LEPAGE

ILLUSTRATED WITH REPRO-

Jules Bastien-Lepage and his

Study of Marie Bashkirtseff.

After a Portrait by Himself.

Joan of Arc Listening to the Voices.

Sketch for Father Jacques.

The Little Sweep.

From a Portrait by Herself

Father Jacques, the Woodman.

JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE AND HIS ART.

1856, the chances of a

Civil Service noviciate

Meuse, half-way between Verdun and Montmedy.

honour of being besieged by Charles V., but there

aspect of the place

tions once stood,

the ground where the fortifica-

where the Tinte

winds through osier beds and meadows.

slopes, enclose the

dingy yellow fronts, have the same washed-out look

young fellow of twenty-two there was nothing

the twilight descend upon the brown-tiled roofs which

In one corner the large green waggon of a travelling

from the window of the neighbouring inn.

only amusement consisted in listening

chatter of some girls sitting at the tinner's door, or

the shouts of the children playing at ball by the wall

thought then that among these urchins,

with torn pinafores and tangled hair, was to be found

the echoes of the solitary square, would come to be

known, and received with acclamations throughout

are interested in Art

JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE was born

1848, in a house which

forms one of the corners of that square of which

simple, well-to-do farmer's

house, the front coloured yellow, the shutters grey.

opening the outer door one finds oneself at once

the kitchen, the

rows of copper saucepans,

male for the bread, and

high chimney-piece surmounted by

cooking utensils, with

dresser furnished with

The next room

and dining-room, and even,

some apartments not

general use, and then some vast

room on the ground

looking to the south, that the painter of Les Foins

(Hay) and of Jeanne d'Arc

family consisted of the father, a sensible, industrious,

Grandfather Lepage, formerly a collector of taxes,

who now found

the modest produce of the

which the Bastiens themselves cultivated, and on the

years old Jules began to show an aptitude

drawing, and his father was eager

himself had a taste for the

imitative arts, employing his leisure