Paris, which for a hundred years had given the signal for all novel tactics in European art, still remained at the head of the movement; the artistic temperament of the French people themselves, and the superlatively excellent training which the painter enjoys in Paris, enable him at once to follow every change of taste with confidence and ease. In 1883 Manet died, on the varnishing day of the Salon, and in the preface which Zola wrote to the catalogue of the exhibition held after the death of the master he was well able to say: “His influence is an accomplished fact, undeniable, and making itself more deeply felt with every fresh Salon. Look back for twenty years, recall those black Salons, in which even studies from the nude seemed as dark as if they had been covered with mouldering dust. In huge frames history and mythology were smothered in layers of bitumen; never was there an excursion into the province of the real world, into life and into perfect light; scarcely here or there a tiny landscape, where a patch of blue sky ventured bashfully to shine down. But little by little the Salons were seen to brighten, and the Romans and Greeks of mahogany to vanish in company with the nymphs of porcelain, whilst the stream of modern representations taken from ordinary life increased year by year, and flooded the walls, bathing them with vivid tones in the fullest sunlight. It was not merely a new period; it was a new painting bent upon reaching the perfect light, respecting the law of colour values, setting every figure in full light and in its proper place, instead of adapting it in an ideal fashion according to established tradition.”

When the way had been paved for this change, when the new principles had been transferred from the chamber of experiments to full publicity, from the Salon des Refusés to the Salon which was official, it was chiefly Bastien-Lepage who gained the first adherents to them amongst the public. But because he does not belong to the pioneers of art, and merely adapted for the great public elements that had been won by Manet, the immoderate praise which was accorded him in earlier days has been recently brought within more legitimate limits. It has been urged, by way of restriction, that he stands in relation to Manet as Breton to Millet, and that, admitting all differences, he has nevertheless a certain resemblance to his teacher, Cabanel. As the latter rendered Classicism elegant, Bastien-Lepage, it has been said, softened the ruggedness of Naturalism, cut and polished the nails of his peasants, and made their rusticity a pretty thing, qualifying it for the drawing-room. Degas was in the habit of calling him the Bouguereau of Naturalism. As a matter of fact, Naturalism was bound to make certain concessions if it were ever to prevail, and such critics forget that it was just these amiable concessions which helped the principles of Manet to prevail more swiftly than would have been otherwise possible. All the forms and ideas of the Impressionists, with which no one, outside the circle of artists, had been able to reconcile himself, were to be found in Bastien-Lepage, purified, mitigated, and set in a golden style. He followed the eclaireurs, as the leader of the main body of the army which has gained the decisive battle, and in this way he has fulfilled an important mission in the history of art.

Baschet.BASTIEN-LEPAGE.Baschet.
PORTRAIT OF HIS GRANDFATHER.
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE.(By permission of M. E. Bastien-Lepage, the owner of the picture.)

Bastien-Lepage was born in ancient Damvillers—once a small stronghold of Lorraine—in a pleasant, roomy house that told a tale of even prosperity rather than of wealth. As a boy he played amongst the venerable moats which had been converted into orchards. Thus in his youth he received the freshest impressions, being brought up in the heart of nature. His father drew a good deal himself, and kept his son at work with the pencil, without any æsthetic theories, without any vague ideal, and without ever uttering the word “academy” or “museum.” Having left school in Verdun, Bastien-Lepage went to Paris to become an official in the post-office. Of an afternoon, however, he drew and painted with Cabanel. But he was Cabanel’s pupil much as Voltaire was a pupil of the Jesuits. “My handicraft,” as he said afterwards, “I learnt at the Academy, but not my art. You want to paint what exists, and you are invited to represent the unknown ideal, and to dish up the pictures of the old masters. In old days I scrawled drawings of gods and goddesses, Greeks and Romans, beings I didn’t know, and didn’t understand, and regarded with supreme indifference. To keep up my courage, I repeated to myself that this was possibly ‘grand art,’ and I ask myself sometimes whether anything academical still remains in my composition. I do not say that one should only paint everyday life; but I do assert that when one paints the past it should, at any rate, be made to look like something human, and correspond with what one sees around one. It would be so easy to teach the mere craft of painting at the academies, without incessantly talking about Michael Angelo, and Raphael, and Murillo, and Domenichino. Then one would go home afterwards to Brittany, Gascony, Lorraine, or Normandy, and paint what lies around; and any morning, after reading, if one had a fancy to represent the Prodigal Son, or Priam at the feet of Achilles, or anything of the kind, one would paint such scenes in one’s own fashion, without reminiscences of the galleries—paint them in the surroundings of the country, with the models that one has at hand, just as if the old drama had taken place yesterday evening. It is only in that way that art can be living and beautiful.”

The outbreak of the war fortunately prevented him from remaining long at the Academy. He entered a company of Franc-Tireurs, took part in the defence of Paris, and returned ill to Damvillers. Here he came to know himself and his peculiar talent. At once a poet and a realist, he looked at nature with that simple frankness which those alone possess who have learnt from youth upwards to see with their own eyes instead of trusting to other people’s. His friends called him “primitive,” and there was some truth in what they said, for Bastien-Lepage came to art free from all trace of mannerism; he knew nothing of academical rules, and merely relied upon his eyes, which were always open and trustworthy.

Looking back as far as he could, he was able to remember nothing except gleaners bowed over the stubble-fields, vintagers scattered amid the furrows of the vineyards, mowers whose robust figures rose brightly from the green meadows, shepherdesses seeking shelter beneath tall trees from the blazing rays of the midday sun, shepherds shivering in their ragged cloaks in winter, pedlars hurrying with great strides across the plain raked by a storm, laundresses laughing as they stood at their tubs beneath the blossoming apple-trees. He was impressionable to everything: the dangerous-looking tramp who hung about one day near his father’s house; the wood-cutter groaning beneath the weight of his burden; the passer-by trampling the fresh grass of the meadows and leaving his trace behind him; the little sickly girl minding her lean cow upon a wretched field; the fire which broke out in the night and set the whole village in commotion. That was what he wanted to paint, and that is what he has painted. The life of the peasants of Lorraine is the theme of all his pictures, the landscape of Lorraine is their setting. He painted what he loved, and he loved what he painted.

Baschet.Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.
BASTIEN-LEPAGE.THE FLOWER GIRL.BASTIEN-LEPAGE.SARAH BERNHARDT.

It was in Damvillers that he felt at home as an artist. He had his studio in the second storey of his father’s house, though he usually painted in the open air, either in the field or the orchard, whilst his grandfather, an old man of eighty, was near him clipping the trees, watering the flowers, and weeding the grass. His mother, a genuine peasant, was always busy with the thousand cares of housekeeping. Of an evening the whole family sat together round the lamp, his mother sewing, his father reading the paper, his grandfather with the great cat on his lap, and Jules working. It was at this time that he produced those familiar domestic scenes, thrown off with a few strokes, which were to be seen at the exhibition of the works which he left behind him. He knew no greater pleasure than that of drawing again and again the portraits of his father and mother, the old lamp, or the velvet cap of his grandfather. At ten o’clock sharp his father gave the signal for going to bed.

In Paris, indeed, other demands were made. In 1872 he painted, with the object of being represented in the Salon, that remarkable picture “In the Spring,” the only one of his works which is slightly hampered by conventionality in conception. The pupil of Cabanel is making an effort at truth, and has not yet the courage to be true altogether. Here, as in the “Spring Song” which followed, there is a mixture of borrowed sentiment, work in the old style and fresh Naturalism. The landscape is painted from nature, and the peasant woman is real, but the Cupids are taken from the old masters.

Baschet.
BASTIEN-LEPAGE.   MME. DROUET.