The portrait, sketched in during the snows of January, was almost finished when the apricot tree began to put on its covering of white flowers in April.
The Hayfield.
By Jules Bastien-Lepage.
Immediately after the opening of the Salon, Bastien packed up his baggage and fled to Damvillers to prepare for his great picture Les Foins (The Hayfield), which occupied him all the summer of 1877, and of which he gave 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 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 it.
“The clumps of trees on the banks of the stream and in the meadow will stand out strongly with a rather Japanese effect….”
“15th August.—Your verses are just the picture I should like to paint. They smell of the hay and the heat of the meadow…. If my hay smells as well as yours I shall be content…. My young peasant is sitting with her arms apart, her face hot and red; her fixed eyes seeing nothing; her attitude altogether broken and weary. I think she will give the true idea of a peasant woman. Behind her, flat on his back, her companion is asleep, with his hands closed; and beyond, in the meadow, in the full sun, the haymakers are beginning to work again. I have had hard work to set up my first ideas, being determined to keep 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 scene. Nothing of that sort. My people stand out against the half-dry hay. There is a little tree in one corner of the picture to show that other trees are near, where the men are gone to rest in the shade. The whole tone of the picture will be a light grey green….”
“September.—Why didn’t you come, lazy fellow? You would have seen my Hay before it was finished. Lenoir, the sculptor, my neighbour in the Impasse, liked it. The country people say it is alive. I have little more than the background to finish. I am going to harness myself to the Reapers, and to a nude study of a Diogenes the cynic, or rather, the sceptic….”
Les Foins was sent to the Salon in 1878. It had a great success, though it was warmly discussed.