Jules Bastien-Lepage
Jules Bastien-Lepage was a French naturalist painter who lived from 1848 to 1884. He was born in Damvillers, a small village in northeastern France. His hometown was a rural and poor area, which greatly influenced his later work. Bastien-Lepage took to art at an early age and his first art teacher was his father, who was also an artist in addition to running a vineyard. Both of his parents supported his artistic endeavors and helped him by purchasing prints of art that he could copy.
Bastien-Lepage began his art career in Verdun, France which was the largest city near his home. He soon found it too small and in 1867 moved to Paris to continue his education. It took him several applications, but he was finally admitted to and graduated from the famous École des Beaux-arts. Between 1870 and 1871, he fought in the Franco-Prussian war. Bastien-Lepage’s first success came in 1873 with his painting, “Portrait of my Grandfather” in which the Paris Salon awarded him a medal. With his 1878 painting, “Haymaking”, he was now seen as the preeminent artist of the Naturalism art movement, which was a spin-off from the Realism art movement happening at that time.
Although he was contemporary with Jean-François Millet and the two painted the same subjects of the rural poor, Bastien-Lepage liked to focus on individuals with as much detail as he could render. He followed a formula with much of his works. There is a high background horizon, a detailed foreground, depth provided by an expansive middle ground, and a solitary figure or just several figures with expressive eyes and face. Unfortunately, Jules Bastien-Lepage died in 1884 at just 36 years of age from cancer after suffering through a long, chronic sickness.
Many critiques credit Bastien-Lepage with helping expedite the more general acceptance of impressionism art by the public. His work, though realistic, had an overall lighter palette. His subjects were also different, in that instead of creating large history or religious pieces, he focused on more rural lifeways and people. Bastien-Lepage’s work was widely shown in Britain and was very influential on the Glasgow Boys, a group of artists from Scotland.
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