Alas! instead of himself my eyes only met his portrait, placed in the first room, and the mournful eloquence of the wreaths and flowers attached to the frame recalled me harshly to the heartrending reality.
The poor “Primitif” will paint no more. The 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 air. The 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 the sketches exhibited by the side of the great pictures there was one that I had already remarked at Damvillers, and that I now saw again with deep emotion. It represents an old peasant woman 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 a flowering branch and inspects with anxious eye the disasters caused by the hurtful rays of the red moon. Bastien-Lepage was like this tree, full of sap and of promising blossom. For years the heavens had been clement to him, and the flowers had given many and rich fruits; then in a single night a murderous frost destroyed all—the open flowers by thousands, and the tree itself. 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 vitality and last on through the centuries, hovering above the earth where the generations of men go turn by turn to sleep,—and this survival of the works of the spirit of man is perhaps the surest immortality upon which he can count.
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE AS ARTIST.
Bas-Relief Portrait of Bastien-Lepage.
By Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE AS ARTIST.
The work of Bastien-Lepage ranks, to my mind, with the very best in modern art. He brought to us what was in some ways a new 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 rules, but nevertheless the objectors expressed their admiration for the skill of the painter; while, on the other hand, for those who accepted him (chiefly the younger men these), no praise was too great, no admiration too enthusiastic.