initial commit of ebook 36533HEADmain

28 files changed, 5022 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/36533-8.txt b/36533-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb75fd2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1526 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bastien Lepage, by Fr. Crastre
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bastien Lepage
+
+Author: Fr. Crastre
+
+Translator: Frederic Taber Cooper
+
+Release Date: June 26, 2011 [EBook #36533]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BASTIEN LEPAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Hunter Monroe and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    MASTERPIECES
+    IN COLOUR
+
+    EDITED BY
+    M. HENRY ROUJON
+
+
+    BASTIEN-LEPAGE
+    (1848-1884)
+
+
+
+
+    IN THE SAME SERIES
+
+ REYNOLDS           CHARDIN
+ VELASQUEZ          MILLET
+ GREUZE             RAEBURN
+ TURNER             SARGENT
+ BOTTICELLI         CONSTABLE
+ ROMNEY             MEMLING
+ REMBRANDT          FRAGONARD
+ BELLINI            DÜRER
+ FRA ANGELICO       LAWRENCE
+ ROSSETTI           HOGARTH
+ RAPHAEL            WATTEAU
+ LEIGHTON           MURILLO
+ HOLMAN HUNT        WATTS
+ TITIAN             INGRES
+ MILLAIS            COROT
+ LUINI              DELACROIX
+ FRANZ HALS         FRA LIPPO LIPPI
+ CARLO DOLCI        PUVIS DE CHAVANNES
+ GAINSBOROUGH       MEISSONIER
+ TINTORETTO         GÉRÔME
+ VAN DYCK           VERONESE
+ DA VINCI           VAN EYCK
+ WHISTLER           FROMENTIN
+ RUBENS             MANTEGNA
+ BOUCHER            PERUGINO
+ HOLBEIN            ROSA BONHEUR
+ BURNE-JONES        BASTIEN-LEPAGE
+ LE BRUN            GOYA
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE I.--THE SONG OF SPRINGTIME
+
+  (Museum at Verdun)
+
+  This is one of the artist's earliest works. A certain embarrassment may
+  be noted in the manner in which the Cupids are treated; even at this
+  period, it is easy to see that allegory is not suited to the precise and
+  realistic talent of this painter; yet the young girl is designed with a
+  vigour which already foreshadows the masterly art of _Hay-making_.]
+
+
+
+
+    Bastien Lepage
+
+    BY FR. CRASTRE
+
+    TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
+    BY FREDERIC TABER COOPER
+
+    ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
+    REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
+
+    [Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM.]
+
+    FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+    NEW YORK--PUBLISHERS
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
+    FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+    [Illustration: March, 1914]
+
+    THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS
+    NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+                                                                   Page
+
+ His Youth                                                          16
+
+ His Best Years                                                     31
+
+ His Premature End                                                  65
+
+
+
+
+ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ Plate
+
+    I.   The Song of Springtime                             Frontispiece
+         Museum at Verdun
+
+   II.   Portrait of M. Wallon                                      14
+         Museum of the Louvre
+
+  III.   The Artist's Mother                                        24
+         Collection of É. Bastien-Lepage
+
+   IV.   The Hay-making                                             34
+         Museum of the Luxembourg
+
+    V.   Portrait of M. Hayem                                       40
+         Museum of the Luxembourg
+
+   VI.   Portrait of M. X----                                       50
+         Museum at Verdun
+
+  VII.   The Little Boatman                                         60
+         Collection of É. Bastien-Lepage
+
+ VIII.   The Artist's Uncle                                         70
+         Museum at Verdun
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+There are certain beings who bear the stamp of the divine seal and are
+preordained to receive the highest favours within the gift of glory;
+they are fated to pass through life like those brilliant meteors which
+are seen to flash across the heavens and disappear in the same instant.
+Bastien-Lepage was one of these meteors. But while the others leave
+behind them only a luminous trail that swiftly vanishes, this rare
+artist, snatched so prematurely from the field of art, traced his
+passage in a furrow of dazzling splendour, the radiance of which has not
+even yet begun to fade.
+
+Bastien-Lepage was a painter in the noblest acceptation of the term; it
+may even be asserted that he would have exercised considerable influence
+upon the art of his epoch if Destiny had not stupidly mown down the
+sturdy flower of his genius in the very hour of its brightest
+blossoming. Born into this world with a solid tenacity of purpose which
+seems to be a special gift of the soil of Lorraine to her sons and
+daughters, he had a clear-cut and unalterable conception of what
+painting should be. His mind was receptive only of simple ideas, his eye
+perceived only visions that were tangible, such as were unobscured by
+any shadow or any artifice. He was the apostle of clearness, both in
+conception and in execution. Every time that he tried experimentally to
+turn aside from his chosen path, he ceased to be himself, he fell
+below his own standards. What interested him most of all, in the life of
+this world which he observed so eagerly, as though he had a presentiment
+of his early end, was nature's most precise and most uncompromising
+manifestation, both in line and in relief; namely, the peasant and the
+environment which frames him. Having deliberately chosen such models,
+Bastien-Lepage could not pretend to be the painter of the Beautiful, nor
+did he ever become so. He did not even adorn his subjects with that
+special sort of idealism with which Millet embellished even his most
+uncouth rustic types, a slightly melancholy idealism obtained by a
+sombre toning down of colour, which Bastien-Lepage held in horror. His
+peasants stand out boldly, in the crude glare of flamboyant noontide,
+under a summer sun that refuses to leave hidden any part of their
+ugliness or their defects. He painted them as he saw them, with the
+searching rays striking them full in the face; and his brush was a
+stranger to any compromise, intolerant of even the slightest
+betterment, in the course of the literal transference of his model to
+his canvas. It made no difference how handsome or how homely a given
+subject might be, Bastien-Lepage would always render him precisely as
+nature, in a grudging or indulgent mood, had made him,--that is to say,
+truly and sincerely, with a precision that would be almost photographic,
+if the minuteness of his technique were not ennobled by the high quality
+of his art. With such gifts, Bastien-Lepage was foreordained to be a
+marvellous interpreter of rural life, and such he was in the highest
+degree; in like manner, he could not fail to become a portrait painter
+of the first order, and it was in this capacity also that he enrolled
+himself among the most interesting and vigorous artists of our epoch.
+
+  [Illustration:
+
+  PLATE II.--PORTRAIT OF M. WALLON
+
+  (Museum of the Louvre)
+
+  Few artists have been able to endow their models with such an animated
+  expression of life. All the keenness, intelligence and austerity of this
+  prominent personage, known by the name of Father of the Constitution,
+  are eloquently transferred to this page, with a sobriety of means that
+  still further emphasizes its vigour.]
+
+
+
+
+    HIS YOUTH
+
+
+Jules Bastien-Lepage was born at Damvillers, in the department of the
+Meuse, on the first of November, 1848. His parents were of the
+well-to-do farming class, occupied from one year's end to the other with
+the work of the fields. Consequently, all the early boyhood of the
+artist was passed in daily contact with the soil of Lorraine and with
+the sons of that soil. He knew them, one and all, in his native village;
+he grew up among them; he went to school side by side with the other
+little rustics of his own age: he understood the peasant class, with all
+their faults, their virtues, their habits of life; he learned to read in
+their faces, which were a sealed book to the outsider, the opinions and
+emotions which they had in common with him.
+
+These childhood impressions were destined to abide with him throughout
+his life; he cherished to the end a fervent love for his native land,
+and he felt that he had an infinitely noble task in painting that life
+of the fields which the Second Empire affected to despise.
+
+But though he came of peasant stock, it was Bastien-Lepage's good
+fortune that these same peasants were in prosperous circumstances and
+could afford to give him an education. They were ambitious for him; and
+it hurt them to see their little Jules, who was so wide-awake, so
+intelligent, and at the same time so frail, leading the hard and
+monotonous life of the fields, following the plough, tilling the soil.
+It needed only a few household economies to enable him to continue his
+studies; so, when the time came, young Bastien-Lepage wended his way
+towards Verdun, where he entered upon his college course.
+
+There is nothing that marks in any particular way these years of study,
+nothing to indicate that the boy was a youthful prodigy, nor that he
+showed any special aptitude for drawing. But he was studious, diligent,
+and anxious to avoid repremands and to fulfil the expectations of his
+parents. In due time he obtained his bachelor's degree, which at that
+period was highly prized. His father, filled with pride, already began
+to form brilliant projects for his future, already foresaw him a
+distinguished official, supervising some great branch of the public
+service. As a matter of fact, a position was found for the young
+baccalaureate in a government department which was neither the most
+desirable nor the one of least importance; namely, the Post Office
+Department. Bastien-Lepage was not vastly delighted with the choice,
+but, dutiful son that he was, he accepted the modest clerkship offered
+him. One circumstance contributed, in a large degree, towards overcoming
+his reluctance: the post assigned to him from the start was in Paris, of
+which he had often heard marvellous things, and in which he hoped that
+he would be able to follow his secret inclination. For, in the interval
+his vocation had revealed itself; he had conceived a passion for
+drawing, for colouring, for painting; and, like Correggio, he was eager
+to say in his turn, "I too am a painter!"
+
+Accordingly he set forth, leaving behind him no suspicion of his
+purpose. Upon arriving at the capital, he acquitted himself scrupulously
+of his official duties, but every leisure moment was consecrated to
+visiting the museums and exhibitions. He saturated himself with the
+wealth of beauty strewn broadcast through the Louvre, and was thrilled
+with admiration at contact with the masters of every school and country.
+He did not care equally for them all, in spite of their genius; his
+intimate preferences leaned to the side of Flemish rather than Italian
+art; but he was not insensible to the lofty inspiration, the severe
+harmony, the faultless composition, which have made the great masters of
+the Renaissance the most astonishing prodigies in the history of
+painting.
+
+But while the older schools of art delighted him, he followed with no
+less attention the movement of contemporary painting. At the hour when
+his critical spirit awoke, certain new elements and new formulas had
+come to light and had been put into practice by two audacious and gifted
+artists by the names of Courbet and Manet. Although the prolonged
+struggle between the classicists and romanticists had not yet come to an
+end, these two rival schools were entrenched in their positions and
+refused to stir forth from them. Supporters of Delacroix and of Ingres
+confined themselves strictly to their respective hostile formulas, doing
+nothing either to expand or to rejuvenate them. Whoever dared to venture
+outside of one of these two beaten tracks was regarded as a madman, and
+his attempts were greeted with derisive clamours by both parties, who
+declared a momentary truce, for the purpose of annihilating him by a
+joint attack. Courbet, who was scorned by Ingres, met with equally harsh
+criticism from Delacroix; and as for Manet, he had managed to call down
+universal wrath upon his head, and at the Salon of 1863 it became
+necessary to place his _Olympia_ in the very topmost line upon the wall,
+in order to protect it from the fury of the public, hounded on by the
+hue and cry of the critics.
+
+Bastien-Lepage made mental notes of all the episodes of this struggle;
+he listened to the criticisms and passed them through the crucible of
+his unspoiled mind, in the presence of the very works under indictment.
+His good sense showed him how large an element of injustice entered into
+these hostilities. Moreover, his peasant blood inclined him to
+sympathize with those artists who refused to bind themselves to seek for
+beauty only within the limits of academic form, and who had the ability
+to make it flash forth from the humblest and even the most vulgar type
+of subject. Furthermore, this constant study of matters pertaining to
+art, day by day added fuel to the hidden fire smouldering within him; he
+was conscious of its mounting flame. Back of the rude sketches, drawn
+and coloured in the tiny chamber befitting an humble postal clerk, he
+perceived vaguely that he also possessed the temperament of a painter,
+and little by little he witnessed the unfolding of his artist's soul.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE III.--THE ARTIST'S MOTHER
+
+  (Collection of É. Bastien-Lepage)
+
+  What a kindly and gentle face this is, the face of the woman to whom the
+  artist applied the tender endearment of "Good little mother!" In this
+  work, it is evident that the heart guided the hand of the painter. None
+  but a son could have rendered with such emotion the humid tenderness of
+  those eyes and the maternal caress of those lips. It is a powerful work,
+  which enrolls Bastien-Lepage in the foremost rank of portrait
+  painters.]
+
+At last, unable to bear it longer, he resigned from the postal service
+and enrolled his name at the Beaux-Arts. At this time, when he entered
+the studio of Cabanel, he was but little more than nineteen years of
+age. Cabanel, to be sure, was not the painter of his choice, but
+Bastien-Lepage was not for that reason any the less appreciative of a
+system of instruction which was dominated by a worship of line-work. His
+training under Cabanel was not without value to the young artist, who
+throughout his life, even in his most realistic paintings, proved
+himself to be an impeccable master of design.
+
+At the outset, however, he was beset with difficulties. Now that his
+salary as a postal clerk had ceased and remittances from the family were
+necessarily restricted, Bastien-Lepage exerted himself to gain a living
+by his own efforts. He had no lack of courage, and he had in addition
+that Lorraine tenacity which enabled him to confront all difficulties
+with tranquil assurance. He worked with desperate energy, and in the
+intervals of respite from his labours he overran all Paris in search of
+orders from business houses. It was an inglorious task, but at least it
+enabled him to live; thus it happened that about 1873 he produced a
+widely circulated advertisement for a perfumery house. Up to this time
+he had remained wholly unknown; and although he had already exhibited
+one painting, at the Salon of 1870, it was passed by unheeded both by
+the critics and the general public.
+
+This lack of success in no wise discouraged him, for he had faith. It
+was in the year 1874 that he exhibited _The Song of Springtime_. It was
+a veritable revelation. There was no neglect this time. The public
+gathered in throngs before his canvas, and the critics, notwithstanding
+a few objections to details, were lavish in their praise and hailed him
+as having the qualities of a true artist. Naturally, the picture was not
+perfect, but it well merited the flattering reception which it received.
+In a springtime landscape a young peasant girl is seated beneath a
+tree, looking before her over a sunlit plain. Around her skirts a whole
+bevy of Cupids are gathering blossoms and offering them to the girl.
+Here, at the first stroke, is an assertion of the young painter's
+independence, his formal determination to emancipate himself from the
+accepted formulas in his treatment of the eternal theme of a young
+girl's soul, opening to the first appeal of love. As a matter of fact,
+the allegory is somewhat clumsy; you realize that the author's talent
+does not run to sentimental compositions. Yet the young girl is brushed
+in with an energetic hand, and all that rather coarse robustness that
+distinguishes the women of peasant stock is blended in a masterly manner
+with the naïve innocence of simple souls. _The Song of Springtime_ was
+Bastien-Lepage's first attempt in that vein of realistic painting in
+which he was soon destined to excel.
+
+That same year he produced _Grandfather's Portrait_, which also
+attracted much attention. The artist had placed his model in the little
+garden adjoining the home of his birth. This portrait, which belongs
+to-day to the painter's brother, is remarkable for its naturalness, its
+touch of intimate understanding, and its vigour of execution.
+
+Bastien-Lepage had now acquired a name. His _Song of Springtime_ won him
+a third class medal, and the State purchased the painting for the museum
+at Verdun, where it at present hangs.
+
+In the following year he exhibited _Her First Communion_, picturing a
+young and pretty country girl, stiff and self-conscious under her white
+veil. This work was the product of keen observation, and is deliberately
+stilted and traditional in its style of execution, recalling in some
+measure the French primitive school. Bastien-Lepage evidently had in
+mind the portraits by François Cluet: his little communicant is
+infinitely artificial in her spotless finery, yet infinitely alive under
+the thin surface wash of colour which recalls the _Elizabeth of
+Austria_, wife of Charles IX, as painted by the greatest of the French
+primitives.
+
+Simultaneously with this picture he exhibited the _Portrait of M.
+Hayem_, in which the vigorous treatment of the face, with its clear,
+firm colour tones and sober workmanship, proclaimed him already a
+portrait painter of the first order.
+
+His success this time was more marked: he received a medal of the second
+class. A less modest artist would have allowed himself to be borne
+tranquilly along by the mounting tide of glory; but Bastien-Lepage did
+not yet feel that he was sufficiently sure of himself. He wished to
+continue for a while longer, working, learning, perfecting himself; he
+even conceived the idea, in spite of his renown, of competing for the
+_Prix de Rome_. Accordingly, the painter of _The Song of Springtime_ and
+_Her First Communion_ might shortly after have been seen entering the
+lists like any ordinary nobody. He obtained only the second prize.
+
+He presented himself again the following year, but with no better
+success. The subject assigned for the competition was _Priam at the Feet
+of Achilles_. It is easy to understand that such a theme was little
+calculated to inspire an artist of Bastien-Lepage's temperament; he
+found it impossible to attain full development unless in the presence of
+nature herself. No amount of manual dexterity can take the place of
+inborn faith, and the young artist had no faith in antiquity; he never
+could muster any enthusiasm for the Greek or Roman gods, nor for
+historic scenes in which the very attitudes are dictated by the rules
+and regulations of time-honoured tradition.
+
+Nevertheless, the work is not without merit; it is forceful, its
+colouring is good, and it falls short of perfection only in failing to
+conform sufficiently with what we know of ancient life. This painting is
+at present to be found in the Museum at Lille.
+
+This rebuff did not discourage Bastien-Lepage unreasonably; but he
+decided to confine himself in the future to painting portraits and
+picturing the life of the fields.
+
+
+
+
+    HIS BEST YEARS
+
+
+The same year that he failed for the second time in the competition for
+the _Prix de Rome_, Bastien-Lepage painted _The Portrait of M. Wallon_,
+which is one of his most important works as a portrait painter. In spite
+of its tendency towards naturalism, this canvas was nevertheless still
+conceived in accordance with the established technique, and the keen and
+serious visage of the Father of the Constitution standing out against
+its sombre background is a fine study in chiaroscuro.
+
+But the following year he struck the naturalistic note more strongly in
+his _Portrait of Lady L._, the only full-length, life-sized portrait
+that he ever painted; and he declared himself plainly and definitely a
+realist in his picture entitled _My Parents_. It would be impossible to
+find two figures more life-like, more literal, or painted with greater
+sincerity. This canvas amounted to a declaration of principles; for an
+artist whom filial piety cannot turn aside from the truth will never
+make sacrifices to convention: he will never consent to embellish or
+idealize his models through tricks of his craft; he will paint them as
+he sees them, without correcting any of the imperfections and ugliness
+with which nature has afflicted them. How clearly we recognize that
+these likenesses of Bastien-Lepage's parents are absolutely true to
+life, and how much better we like them as they are, in the simple
+intimacy of daily life, than if they had been decked out, all spick and
+span, as a less scrupulous artist would inevitably have shown them to
+us!
+
+Bastien-Lepage's brother, himself a painter of some talent, has
+preserved in his studio at Neuilly a certain number of the artist's
+works, which he surrounds with pious care and feelingly exhibits to
+occasional visitors. The family portraits are there, pulsating with life
+and radiating that generous peasant kindliness which finds
+expression in a broad and tender smile. The father, seated in a chair in
+his garden, an old man with shrewd yet friendly eyes, seems so real, so
+actual, that we almost expect him to step down from his frame to bid us
+welcome. And what a marvel the _Portrait of my Mother_ is, which forms a
+companion piece on the same wall! A somewhat wistful charm pervades this
+face, with its deeply graven lines, and an infinite tenderness, a true
+mother's tenderness, hovers over the thin, pale lips.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE IV--HAY-MAKING
+
+  (Museum of the Luxembourg)
+
+  A masterpiece of contemporary painting, because of the truth of its
+  attitudes and the vigour of its execution. It would be impossible to
+  render more forcibly the blissfulness of rest when the body has been
+  racked by the exhausting labour of the soil. In this picture,
+  Bastien-Lepage revealed himself as an incomparable painter of rural
+  life.]
+
+Perhaps this is the moment, in the presence of these pictures, to
+emphasize Bastien-Lepage's great value as a colourist. Few contemporary
+painters have used colour with so much tact, such veritable mastery as
+he. Others have employed more dazzling tonal schemes and have achieved
+more gorgeous effects, but no one has rendered with such exact truth the
+tints of the flesh, the grayish folds of wrinkles, the profound light of
+the eye. And his colour is always clear, always unmistakably employed
+to produce a sought-after effect. There is no artifice, no trick-work,
+it is all straightforward, honest, precise; the opposition of light and
+shade never result in opacity, bitumen plays no part in his canvases,
+the astonishing relief of which is obtained by means of such perfect
+simplicity that it recalls the inimitable technique of Correggio.
+
+In 1878 he exhibited _Hay-making_, that magisterial page from the life
+of the fields which to-day is the pride of the Luxembourg museum, and
+which the art of the engraver has scattered broadcast to the extent of
+millions of copies.
+
+This picture represents a vast sun-bathed meadow, overstrewn with
+new-mown hay and punctuated, here and there, by the rounded cones of the
+stacks. Against the blue background of the sky, green hill-tops trace an
+undulant line. In the foreground a robust, bony-armed country-woman is
+seated on the grass, her legs stretched out before her in an attitude
+expressive of the utter weariness resulting from the work performed.
+Her head, solidly planted on her massive neck, is a marvel of realism;
+in her vulgar peasant face we may read health, strength, and a sort of
+dulled mentality born of physical fatigue. In every fibre of her
+exhausted body the woman is veritably resting, and through her
+half-parted lips it seems as though we could detect the passage of her
+hurried breathing. The man beside her, no less worn out than she, is
+stretched at full length on the thick couch of grass, and with his hat
+over his face, to shelter it from the sun, he is sleeping as though dead
+to the world.
+
+Every detail of this canvas is perfect, because every detail is true,
+drawn straight from life, the fruit of minute observation. In it
+Bastien-Lepage once more affirms his predilection for the open country;
+and nothing could be more impressive than these two uncouth, vulgar,
+homely human beings, set amid the splendour of a meadow turned golden by
+the sun. It is an every-day spectacle; it would not seem at first sight
+to contain material for a picture. But Bastien-Lepage has succeeded in
+proving indisputably that beauty does not consist solely in the harmony
+of the body, but in the impression which emanates from scenes that are
+most humble in outward appearance. In these few square feet of canvas
+the artist has summed up, perhaps without intending it, all the majesty
+of nature and all the grandeur of the life of the fields. It is scarcely
+necessary to add that this work is a transcript of the soil of Lorraine,
+that good natal soil which he loved so profoundly and to which he
+returned eagerly, year after year.
+
+Bastien-Lepage was exclusively the painter of the rural aspects of
+Lorraine; he loved its horizons, its fertile and undulating plains. And
+when, occasionally, he ventured into allegory, the background was still
+Lorraine, and the characters were developed in the familiar setting of
+his native village, Damvillers. And how he loved it! How he enjoyed the
+warm atmosphere of affection which always awaited him when his
+father, grandfather, and valiant and devoted "little mother" gathered at
+night around the family table! He made his home in Paris, because
+residence there was indispensable, both for business and artistic
+reasons; but the moment that he could escape from the capital and its
+constraints, he would go to rest and gather new energy in the midst of
+the family circle. He had a spacious studio installed in the second
+story of the ancestral home; and there he worked, absolutely happy so
+long as he could see the old grandfather at his side, pipe in mouth,
+examining the work with a knowing air, and the father and mother in a
+sort of ecstasy, as they watched him fill in his canvas.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE V.--PORTRAIT OF M. HAYEM
+
+  (Museum of the Luxembourg)
+
+  A marvel of discernment and of rendering. The face, to be sure, has a
+  strong originality; but there is no slight merit in having expressed
+  with such striking truth the piercing intelligence of the eyes that
+  twinkle behind the lenses of the spectacles, and the energy, tempered
+  with satiric humour, of his whole odd physiognomy.]
+
+Nevertheless, Bastien-Lepage was no studio painter; it was not from the
+height of a window that he chose to contemplate nature, but in the open
+fields, in the very heart of the furrows; and it was there also, in the
+midst of the wheat and the rye, that he set up his easel and painted
+his peasants in action, in the daily fulfilment of their thankless
+task. And by picturing them thus, without artifice, in all their
+simplicity of gesture and coarseness of feature, he imbued his canvases
+with a profound spirit of poetry, through which the often brutal realism
+of his subjects was redeemed and ennobled. In the presence of these
+peasants he experienced a joy more genuine than he had ever felt before
+the rarest canvases in any museum. Not that he denied or disdained the
+genius of the great ancestors of painting; he had too much reverence for
+his art ever to dream of doing so. But when it came to a question of
+training, he could learn more from nature than from them. Listen to his
+own exposition of his ideas:
+
+"What a pity," he wrote, "that we are initiated, whether we will or not,
+into traditions and routines, under the pretext that this is the way to
+train us to be artists! It would be so simple to teach the use of brush
+and palette, without ever once mentioning the name of Michelangelo or
+Raphael or Murillo or Domenichino! We could then go home, back to
+Brittany or Gascony, Lorraine or Normandy, and peacefully paint the
+portrait of our own province; and if some morning the book we had
+chanced to read aroused the wish to paint a Prodigal Son, or Priam at
+the feet of Achilles, we could reconstruct the scene to suit ourselves,
+without needing to resort to the museums, taking the setting from our
+own surroundings and making use of the models close at hand, as though
+the old drama dated only from yesterday. That is the way for an artist
+to succeed in breathing the breath of life into his art and in making it
+beautiful and appealing to the eyes of the whole world. And that is the
+goal towards which I am striving with all my strength."
+
+As painter of the open air, he became in a certain sense the founder of
+a school, without meaning to be; for his conception of the painter's art
+won over a whole group of young artists who united in hailing him as
+their master. Each year his offerings to the Salon were impatiently
+awaited, and his followers gathered in full force before them,
+discussing, comparing, acclaiming; each Salon became the occasion for a
+new success, the critics were unanimous in praising him, the public
+adopted his pictures for their own, because they could understand his
+clear and rigorous manner. Whatever hostility he met with was among his
+own colleagues, at least among such of them as were discouraged and
+humiliated by his vigorous originality. Nevertheless, the Exposition of
+1878, at which he had gathered together all his works, was an especially
+triumphant occasion for him; yet when the awards were distributed, he
+discovered that he had received nothing but a medal of the third class.
+
+At the Salon of 1879, Bastien-Lepage exhibited his _Women gathering
+Potatoes_, which formed a companion piece to his _Hay-making_. Here
+again we have the landscape of Lorraine and the eternal and infinitely
+varied theme of rural labour. In a sun-parched field two women are
+toiling to reap the harvest of potatoes. While the one in the middle
+distance is stooping to turn up the ripe bulbs from the soil, the other,
+placed in the foreground, is striving to empty the contents of her
+basket into a sack which she holds open by a wonderfully natural
+movement of her knee. Nothing could be simpler or more humble than this
+subject, and yet one feels drawn towards it, conquered by the truth of
+these two figures, both in their attitude and their expression.
+Involuntarily memory conjures up another canvas, _The Gleaners_, and we
+realize that it is impossible to resist that higher appeal which the
+great artists succeed in giving to the most commonplace episode of
+farming life. But, unlike Millet, Bastien-Lepage does not awaken in us
+any compassion for these beings who toil, stooping above the earth; no
+touch of bitterness saddens his pictures, and the types which he shows
+to us have the healthy vigour of peasants who live their lives in the
+open air and love the soil which nourishes them.
+
+This picture, when it appeared, produced a sensation. Coming directly
+after the _Hay-making_, it definitely established Bastien-Lepage's
+talent and placed him in the foremost rank of painters of rural life.
+The critics hailed this powerful canvas with enthusiasm. Théodore de
+Banville, writing of the Salon of 1879, said: "M. Bastien-Lepage is the
+king of this Exposition. Young as he is, he has started in to produce
+masterpieces: he is very wise! For in later years an artist continues to
+copy himself, with more or less cleverness and success; but the creative
+genius has taken wing, like a bird on whose tail we have failed to drop
+the indispensable grain of salt. The _October Season_ pictures the
+harvesting of potatoes. The earth, the encompassing air as far as we can
+see, the sky, the solitude laden with silence, are all evoked for us in
+this picture by the sincerity of its powerful painter; the peasant women
+are done in a masterly manner, and precisely for the reason that he has
+seen them apart from all convention and has not tried to idealize them
+by any hackneyed device."
+
+Albert Wolff was no less enthusiastic: "The colouring in _Women
+harvesting Potatoes_ is ingratiating and discreet; not a discordant
+touch disturbs the beautiful harmony of this canvas, over which the
+silence of the open country has descended, enveloping the obscure toil.
+It is only artists of superior powers who can embody so much charm in a
+single conception."
+
+Another feature of the same Salon was his magnificent portrait of
+_Madame Sarah Bernhardt_, a marvel of expression and of delicate art,
+embodied in a pale symphony of tenderest whites, blending harmoniously
+with the warmest tones of gold. The great tragic actress is portrayed
+draped, almost swathed, in a gown of white china silk, verging on the
+faintest yellowish caste; she is posed in profile, that cameo-like
+profile that has so often been portrayed. She is seated, with a sort of
+intentional rigidity, on a white fur robe, and is examining a statuette
+of Orpheus, in old ivory, which she holds in her hands. Her expressive
+and intellectual features are treated with a vigour which does full
+justice to the classic beauty and virile energy of the sitter.
+
+"The work as a whole," wrote the critic of the _Revue des Beaux-Arts_,
+"possesses supreme distinction and an admirable delicacy of colouring.
+The silvery tones of the whites, the warm grays of the draped gown lead
+up to the freshness of the delicate, rose-like flesh tints, beneath the
+crown of close curled locks that seem at once massive and weightless.
+The artist's hand was sure of itself; it neither groped nor hesitated.
+The execution is such that the drawing of the gown and the lines of the
+face seem to have been traced by an engraver's tool. In this case,
+however, definiteness has not resulted in stiffness. The sharp design
+has not imprisoned unwilling forms; it leaves them free to move as they
+please within the limits of their contours which are its domain. It is
+worth while to examine with a lens the marvellous process which, by
+the aid of imperceptible half-tones, has softened the modelling of the
+face and hands."
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VI.--PORTRAIT OF M. X----
+
+  (Museum at Verdun)
+
+  Bastien-Lepage possessed the rare quality of being able to bestow the
+  same superior skill upon every part of a portrait. Being sincere before
+  all else, he never tried to shirk any difficulty; this is seen in the
+  care he took in painting the hands of all his various sitters, showing
+  something akin to vanity in the marvellous talent he displayed in
+  rendering them. In this portrait--just as in all the others--the hands
+  are quite as truly a miracle of execution as the face itself.]
+
+These two pictures earned Bastien-Lepage the Cross of the Legion of
+Honour and a definite recognition of his talent. The artist could not
+keep his delight to himself and, good son that he was, wished to share
+it with his beloved family; so he sent for them, to pay him a visit in
+Paris. The grandfather and the "good little mother" arrived, full of
+pride in this famous son, of whom the whole world was talking. He showed
+them the sights of the city and was only too happy to have a chance to
+introduce them to his friends; he took his mother to the big shops and
+insisted on choosing silk cloaks and silk dresses for her. The poor
+woman protested, saying that they were far too fine, that she would
+never dare to wear anything like that. "Show us some more," ordered the
+devoted artist, "I want mamma to have her choice of the best there is!"
+
+After the old people had returned home to Lorraine, Bastien-Lepage set
+out for England, where he was to paint the portrait of the Prince of
+Wales, who afterwards became King Edward VII.
+
+In this portrait of tiny dimensions the Prince is represented in fancy
+costume, after the manner of Holbein. His garments recall in a measure
+those worn by King Henry VIII, in the celebrated portrait done by the
+great painter from Basle. The Collar of the Golden Fleece is displayed
+upon his breast. In the background of the picture may be seen dimly,
+through a veil of mist, the panorama of London and the gray ribbon of
+the Thames. The portrait is a little gem, which Bastien-Lepage wrought
+with the minuteness and affectedly hieratic mannerism of Holbein and the
+French primitive school. Although at present in possession of M. Émile
+Bastien-Lepage, it will eventually find its place, together with a
+goodly number of other canvases, in the museum of the Louvre, to which
+the brother of the great artist intends to bequeath them.
+
+It should be mentioned here, in connection with this work, that
+Bastien-Lepage continued to make more and more of a specialty of
+portraits of reduced dimensions, and that he acquired in this respect a
+reputation of the first order. He loved these little canvases, scarcely
+larger than miniatures, and he expended on their scanty surfaces an
+inimitable skill; he embellished them with a wealth of accessory detail
+which brings to mind, as we look at them to-day, the formidable labours
+of the illuminators of the middle ages. But this goldsmith's work, far
+from impairing the effect of the whole, adds a certain fascination to
+it. And he expended upon the study of the face the same degree of
+devotion that he gave to the rendering of a garment. His models relive
+with an intensity of life such as could be expressed only by an artist
+who has made a life-long study of nature in her minutest manifestations.
+
+To name over his portraits would be to mention an equal number of
+masterpieces. The catalogue would be too long, for Bastien-Lepage was
+an indefatigable workman. We may content ourselves with citing those
+that are most widely known: that of _M. Andrieux_, one-time Prefect of
+Police, whose refined features are rendered with striking truth; that of
+_J. Bastien-Lepage_, the artist's uncle, which is here reproduced and
+which shows him violin in hand, a clear and vigorous piece of
+brush-work, transcribing life in telling strokes, with an astonishing
+simplicity of means. This fine example is to be seen to-day in the
+museum at Verdun. And in the same museum there is still another that
+deserves mention; namely, the excellent _Portrait of M. X._ And we must
+not forget the _Portrait of André Theuriet_, born, like Bastien-Lepage,
+on the banks of the Meuse and attached to the painter by ties of almost
+fraternal affection. One feels that, in this picture, the heart must
+have guided the hand, for it would be difficult to find another work
+more magisterial in execution and more delicate in finish. And lastly,
+there is _Mme. Bastien-Lepage_, the "good little mother," as the great
+artist and loving son used to call her. He posed her in the garden of
+the home at Damvillers. She is seated on a stone bench; on her knees
+rests a large garden hat; her two hands are crossed, one over the other,
+and in the left she holds a little bunch of field flowers. She is clad
+in a loose dress of sombre colour, cut with a pelerine; and nothing but
+the one bright spot formed by the white collar reveals the severity of
+the costume. The whole attitude of the body in repose is perfect in its
+truth and naturalness; but our admiration changes and quickens to
+emotion when we raise our eyes to the level of the face of this "good
+little mother," a bony, irregular face, almost ugly, but so gentle, so
+kind, so touchingly illumined by the tender caress in the eyes as they
+rest upon the adored son in the course of painting her. Those emaciated
+features, which not even the crown of blonde hair is able to rejuvenate,
+are unmistakably those of a mother; if we had not known, we should
+inevitably have divined it; no one but a son, and a great artist as
+well, could have crowned the brow of a woman with such an aureole of
+gentleness and love.
+
+Bastien-Lepage, whom those who envied him affected to regard as
+dedicated wholly to the reproduction of rustic uncouthness, had no equal
+in catching the radiance of feminine charms, even in their subtlest
+manifestations. No one was more skilled than he in seizing and recording
+the one particular trait, often elusive and intangible, which
+characterizes a woman and makes her beautiful. What delicious portraits
+of women we owe to him! Where could we meet with a more smiling image
+than that of _Mme. Godillot_, radiant and seductive, a rosy vision in
+the black velvet of her gown, relieved by the brilliant sheen of her
+white satin corsage! And what studied and elaborate art was expended on
+the _Portrait of Mme. Klotz_, whose magnificent brunette beauty emerges
+like a gorgeous lily from the surrounding whiteness of her scarf, that
+is all the more dazzlingly white by contrast with her sombre robe! And
+still again, there is the _Portrait of Mme. Juliette Drouet_, another
+beautiful and noble specimen of portraiture. And how marvellously
+Bastien-Lepage could detect the hidden soul lurking in the inmost
+recesses of his models and reveal it behind the transparent screen of
+their eyes! If Bastien-Lepage had not achieved eternal glory as an
+interpreter of rural life, he would still have remained celebrated as a
+portrait painter.
+
+But to Bastien-Lepage portrait painting was only a side issue, a form of
+relaxation between two landscapes; his predilection, his one object in
+life, so to speak, was to return constantly to his peasants, his scenes
+of toil, his fields of Lorraine.
+
+After his return from England he passed some months at Damvillers, when
+an impulse seized him to visit Italy, to which the verdict of a
+prejudiced committee had once upon a time barred his way. He proceeded
+straight to Venice, and it may as well be acknowledged at once,
+Venetian art left him cold, if not indifferent. He had never in the
+least understood any of the big "set pieces," and in spite of all the
+art of Veronese and Titian, in spite of their dazzling flare of colour,
+he never succeeded in understanding their sumptuous allegories or in
+accepting the fantastic interpretation of nature which the Venetians
+allowed themselves. He returned to Damvillers, profoundly disillusioned
+and more than ever convinced that nature alone, such as he saw it, was
+deserving of the attention of the true artist. There would be no object
+in discussing here how rightly or how ill founded such an opinion was;
+we note it only to indicate once more the absolute independence of the
+painter, his fixed determination never to imitate anyone.
+
+And, beyond question, there is no resemblance to any other painter in
+that curious and remarkable picture known as _Jeanne d'Arc listening to
+the Voices_. Lorraine in heart and soul, Bastien-Lepage desired to pay
+his tribute, as so many had done before him, to the glorious
+heroine who, like him, had come from the banks of the Meuse. And he
+wished also to restore her to her natural setting, with the greatest
+degree of historic accuracy. Consequently it is in a Lorraine garden
+surrounding a Lorraine cottage that he shows us Jeanne, the shepherdess;
+around her are the familiar garden utensils such as peasants use to-day
+just as they did in the fifteenth century. She is standing in an
+inspired and attentive attitude, which gives to her whole countenance
+that forceful character which Bastien-Lepage imprints upon all his
+compatriots. For he wished to make her, in a certain sense, a composite
+type of the women of the Lorraine race, such as Theuriet has described:
+"The forehead low but intelligent, the eyes with drooping lids that half
+conceal the somewhat sullen glance; the bones prominent in cheek and
+jaw, the chin square, indicative of an opinionated race; the mouth
+large, with half parted lips, through which one perceives the passage of
+the deep-drawn breath." This head is always the same; under all the
+variations in physiognomy we always meet with the same local type: it is
+the head of the woman in _Hay-making_ and of the _Women gathering
+Potatoes_, and it is also that of the "good little mother," so
+fundamentally and emphatically representative of Lorraine.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE LITTLE CHIMNEY-SWEEP
+
+  (Collection of É. Bastien-Lepage)
+
+  This attractive picture, full of charm and vigour, belongs to the
+  closing years of the artist's life, at the time when he was enjoying the
+  flood tide of his talent. How much force and truth there is in this
+  picture of the little chimney-sweep, and what graceful nimbleness in the
+  movements of the cats that he is watching at play.]
+
+Nevertheless _Jeanne d'Arc listening to the Voices_ was rather badly
+received by the critics. Without disputing the originality and vigour of
+the inspired shepherdess, they reproached the artist for the presence of
+the traditional saints. Bastien-Lepage had indicated these under the
+form of luminous vapour, radiating through the branches overhanging the
+garden: St. Michael in the golden armour of a knight of the fifteenth
+century, St. Margaret and St. Catherine as phantoms so diaphanous as to
+be hardly perceptible. The idealists complained that the picture was
+lacking in idealism; the realists were somewhat disconcerted to find the
+apparitions there at all. It must be acknowledged that Bastien-Lepage
+ceases to be himself the moment that he ventures to attempt the
+supernatural or even allegory pure and simple. He feels that he is no
+longer on familiar ground, he hesitates, he fumbles, and the harmony of
+the work suffers in consequence. Nevertheless, in spite of this
+undeniable defect, the face of Jeanne d'Arc will be remembered as a
+piece of powerful painting and genuine inspiration.
+
+At all events, Bastien-Lepage was keenly aware of the half-way nature of
+his success, and from that day renounced forever the element of the
+marvellous and confined himself to that concrete and tangible poetry
+which emanates from the earth.
+
+Some little time after his _Jeanne d'Arc_, he produced _The Mendicant_,
+veteran knight of the road, whose lazy life is passed in going from door
+to door, asking charity and compelling it if need be; suspicious looking
+old tramp, perhaps a thief as well, who inspires fear and whose sack is
+often filled through unwillingness to provoke him. The artist has
+pictured him with a stout stick in his hand, stowing away the slice of
+bread which a pretty slip of a girl in a blue apron has just given him.
+This fine and vigorous canvas scored almost as much of a success, at the
+Salon of 1881, as the admirable _Portrait of Albert Wolff_, a critic on
+the _Figaro_ and close personal friend of the artist.
+
+In 1882 he won a further success with his superb _Father Jacques_, a
+masterly study of the Lorraine peasant, and with his charming _Portrait
+of Mme. W._
+
+In 1883 came _Love in a Village_, one of his most popular canvases, in
+which he depicted with charming naturalness the uncomplicated and naïve
+courtship of rustic lovers. Here are a pair who are untroubled by
+curious glances; the nearer houses of the village are quite close by.
+Bending slightly towards his sweetheart, the man is murmuring his
+avowals in her ear, in a voice that, we suspect, is by no means steady.
+Strapping fellow that he is, he evidently lacks the habit of making
+pretty speeches; we can see that from the embarrassed air with which he
+twists his fingers. His words, however, are plainly not lacking in
+eloquence, for the girl, type of buxom young womanhood that we have
+already learned to know, has bent her head and, although her back is
+turned, we are sure that she is blushing as she listens to his
+declaration. A special atmosphere emanates from this picture, as well as
+that profound spirit of poetry which is inseparable from the eternal
+song of love.
+
+
+
+
+    HIS PREMATURE END
+
+
+At this period Bastien-Lepage had already begun to incur the first
+attacks of the disease which was destined so soon to end his days. He
+suffered violent pains in the kidneys. He became melancholy, nervous,
+irritable; he shut himself up in his studio in the Rue Legendre, and
+even his best friends could not gain admittance. The doctors who were
+called in recognized the gravity of his illness and ordered energetic
+treatment and a change of air. The poor artist reconciled himself to go
+for a time to Brittany, and his choice fell on Concarneau. The keen sea
+air produced a temporary betterment, and he took advantage of it to
+work, for he could not resign himself to lay aside his palette and
+brushes. He spent entire days in a boat and, in spite of his sufferings,
+executed several landscapes of rare beauty. But his condition, instead
+of improving, took a turn for the worse. "The digestive tube," he wrote
+to Theuriet, "is always kicking up a row!" The pain in the kidneys and
+bowels became at this time so violent that he was forced to decide to
+return to Paris, in order to consult the men of science once again.
+
+This time, when Dr. Potain examined him, he could no longer deceive
+himself as to the artist's fate; he saw that his patient was
+irremediably condemned. However, a sojourn in a milder climate might
+prolong his life for a few months; so he advised Algeria. The prospect
+of the journey, the desire to make the acquaintance of this land of
+sunshine which Delacroix, Decamps, and Fromentin had taught him to love,
+for a few days gave a false strength to the poor sufferer, which
+produced a deceptive appearance of renewed health and even deceived the
+artist himself. Besides, Mme. Bastien-Lepage, the "good little mother,"
+was to accompany him, and this unselfish and tender devotion warmed his
+heart. The poor woman forced back her tears in order to smile upon the
+unfortunate son whom she knew to be doomed. And so the pitiful pair set
+forth for the land of sunshine, she consumed with grief, and he almost
+joyous in the hope of a speedy cure.
+
+His first letters to his friends bore the imprint of good spirits;
+Algeria aroused his enthusiasm by its clear and vibrant colours; his
+disease declared a brief truce and he began to form projects. The
+thought of dying had not yet even vaguely occurred to him, though, for
+that matter, he had no fear of death. The previous year he had painted
+_Gambetta on his Death-bed_; and his frequent visits to Ville-d'Avray
+led him to discuss the inevitable end of life. "I am not afraid of
+death," he said, "dying is nothing,--the important thing is to survive
+oneself, and who can be sure of establishing a claim upon posterity? But
+there! I am talking nonsense! So long as our work is true, nothing else
+matters."
+
+But before long the ravages of the disease began to make headway; the
+kidneys no longer performed their function, and he suffered atrocious
+agonies which stretched him for days at a time on his back. Even the
+burning heat of the African sun no longer had strength enough to animate
+his shattered physique; the brush, which the artist from time to time
+still attempted to take up, fell from between his fingers. He,
+Bastien-Lepage, painter of the soil, found himself unable to
+transfer to canvas the enchantment of that land of fairy tale! And
+he poured forth his distress in long and poignant letters, in which
+could be read in every line the loss of hope and the sure prevision of
+the now inevitable end.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VIII.--THE ARTIST'S UNCLE
+
+  (Museum at Verdun)
+
+  Here is still another kindly and vigorous face from Lorraine, forcefully
+  modelled, with salient jaw bones, betraying the obstinacy of the race.
+  An air of good nature softens the energy of this face, and the eyes
+  sparkle with intelligence. This portrait is treated in a free-handed
+  manner, with unfaltering strokes, and its colouring is especially
+  excellent.]
+
+As no amelioration took place, Bastien-Lepage made the return journey to
+Paris towards the end of May, 1884. He went back to his studio in the
+Rue Legendre, where he had formerly passed such happy hours in the full
+enjoyment of a talent at its zenith and a constitution apparently able
+to defy all tests. Now, however, he dragged around a dying body, with
+disease gnawing at his vitals. He could no longer sleep without the aid
+of powerful doses of morphine. The winter-time increased his suffering;
+his strength rapidly failed him; and, on the tenth of December, at six
+o'clock in the evening, he drew his last breath, at the age of
+thirty-six years.
+
+As long as he could hold a brush, Bastien-Lepage continued to work, in
+spite of the sufferings which racked him. During the year preceding his
+death, while he was already experiencing frightful tortures, he painted
+_The Woman making Lye_ and _The Little Chimney-sweep_, the latter of
+which is here reproduced. This admirable canvas is to be seen now at the
+studio of the painter's brother at Neuilly, and forms part of the legacy
+which M. Émile Bastien-Lepage intends to bequeath to the Louvre. It has
+never been shown at any Salon, and for that matter there are a good many
+other paintings and portraits which have never been exhibited in public
+and which are not for that reason any the less remarkable. We may cite
+at random: _The Portrait of M. É. Bastien-Lepage_, _The Prince of
+Wales_, _Mme. Juliette Drouet_, _A Little Girl going to School_, _The
+Little Pedler asleep_, _The Vintage_, _No Help! The Thames at London,
+etc._
+
+The very year of his death, shortly before his departure for Algeria,
+Bastien-Lepage executed a delicious little canvas entitled _The Forge_,
+in which the artist expended a surprising amount of talent and skill,
+and which enables us to realize what extraordinary heights his ever
+progressive genius might have attained, but for the blind and brutal
+cruelty of Destiny.
+
+His death was a time of mourning for the arts; the regrets which he left
+behind him were unanimous. Even those who had been opposed to his
+aesthetic creed paid homage to his great conscientiousness as an artist
+and his noble character as a man.
+
+During March and April, 1885, only a few months after his death, all
+literary and artistic Paris flocked to the Hotel de Chimay, an adjunct
+to the École des Beaux-Arts, where a posthumous exhibition of his works
+had been organized.
+
+At this exhibition the entire body of his works had been brought
+together. The museums had loaned the canvases which they possessed and
+the private collectors had done their share towards the glorification of
+the artist by entrusting to the organizers a goodly number of paintings
+and portraits which had never figured in any of the Salons.
+
+Thus it was made possible to comprehend at a single glance the life-work
+of this remarkable artist and to appreciate the distance he had
+traversed, the progress he had made during his brief existence, and the
+brilliant prospects that were destroyed by his untimely death.
+
+From all these numerous works, exhibited side by side, what stood out
+most clearly was the unity of thought which had conceived them and the
+dogged fidelity to principles which had controlled their execution. At
+the same time they revealed the amazing adaptability of his talent,
+which essayed the most diverse and conflicting subjects with the same
+realistic vigour, bestowing even upon his vaporous and delicate
+portraits of women a touch which, while light, is unmistakably his own,
+and in which we recognize that noble, conscientious workmanship, free
+from all artifice, which was the distinctive hall-mark both of his
+painting and of his character.
+
+But the quality which dominates all the rest in the work of
+Bastien-Lepage, and which emanates from it like the fragrance which is
+exhaled by certain precious essences, is his ardent and deep-rooted love
+for his native soil. This form of local patriotism, determined by the
+boundaries of Lorraine, underwent a noble expansion to the point of
+encircling the entire earth; for while the painter chose his models out
+of the familiar landscape of his childhood's home, his observation and
+his art broke out of the bounds of this special setting and embraced
+rustic humanity throughout France and even beyond. His peasants are
+unmistakably from the banks of the Meuse in type and in customs, but
+they are from the world at large in gesture and in philosophy of life.
+Whether he comes from the North or from the South, the tiller of the
+soil wages the same conflict with ungrateful furrows, the spade and the
+plough imprint the same calluses on his bony hands, the sun browns his
+energetic and stubborn features to the same deep tan. It is in this
+respect that the art of Bastien-Lepage assumes a higher significance;
+like Millet, it is not a peasant whom he paints, but the peasant,
+forever unchanging in spite of latitude. But if his work has attained
+this higher eminence of generalization, it is precisely for the reason
+that the artist's watchful eye has succeeded in discovering, in the life
+of the peasantry, that state of mind which is common to them all, that
+immutable gesture which they have always made and always will make. He
+has understood and translated with inspired eloquence their rugged
+strength, their naïve awkwardness, their simple intelligence.
+
+Another glorious distinction of Bastien-Lepage was that he loved the
+fields as well as he loved the peasants. Not fields drowned beneath
+melancholy shadow and pallid shifting light, but fields bathed in
+sunshine, until the golden tassels of the grain crackle like sparks
+under the fire of the midday sun. Always and everywhere he sought for
+light, and in the midst of it his modest protagonists of rustic life
+stand out in all their vigour.
+
+It would be easy to cite, among our best contemporary painters, a
+considerable number of artists who are brilliantly continuing the
+tradition left by Bastien-Lepage and emulating his predilection for the
+luminous brilliance of the open air. How often, in the presence of a
+canvas by Lhermitte, our thoughts go back to the painter of Lorraine,
+whose vigorous execution and joyous colouring seem to have been
+reincarnated! Art is indebted to Bastien-Lepage for having reinstated
+nature in all her literal truth by proving that, in order to be
+beautiful, she has no need of artificial and superfluous adornment.
+
+Lorraine, out of gratitude, wished to perpetuate the memory of this
+glorious son of the Meuse, who had so eloquently celebrated the vitality
+and poetry of his natal earth. It was at Damvillers itself that it was
+decided to raise a monument to the great painter; and around its
+pedestal there were gathered the "good little mother," all in tears, the
+assembled population of the village and the whole region round about,
+and even the Government took part in the pious ceremony by sending as
+its representative M. Gustave Larroumet, director of the Beaux-Arts.
+This eloquent art critic brought as a tribute to the departed painter
+the official seal of immortality, and he pronounced it in terms vibrant
+with emotion.
+
+"At the moment," he said, "when ordinarily the best of artists have done
+no more than to give indications of their originality and when ripening
+years alone begin to keep the promises of youth, Jules Bastien-Lepage
+died, leaving masterpieces behind him, besides having liberated an
+artistic formula from the tendencies and exaggerations which hampered
+it, and indicated to the art of painting a new pathway along which his
+young heirs are advancing with an assured step. He loved nature and
+truth; he loved his own people, and no one ever lived who was surrounded
+with a greater degree of affection; he inspired faithful friendships
+which he himself enjoyed to the full; and those whom he left behind
+soothe their heart-ache with the balm of tender memories; he practised
+his art without ever making sacrifice to passing fashion or sordid
+profit; there was no place in his mind or in his heart for any other
+than noble and generous thoughts. Let us comfort ourselves, therefore,
+for what his death has taken from us by the thought of what his life has
+left to us, and let us assign him his place in the ranks of the younger
+master painters who have been mown down in full flower, close beside
+that of Géricault and of Henri Regnault."
+
+In his admirable biographic and critical study of Bastien-Lepage, whose
+personal friend he had been, M. L. de Fourcaud, by way of conclusion,
+bids him this touching farewell:
+
+"Poor Bastien-Lepage, snatched away one winter's night, at thirty-six
+years of age, in the fairest flowering of his bright promise, in the
+richest expansion of his personality; may each returning month of May
+bring at least an abundance of blossoms to the apple tree beside his
+grave! For the blossoms of the apple were always, in his eyes, so fair a
+sight!"
+
+To-day he sleeps forever in a corner of that Lorraine land which he
+loved so dearly, and perhaps in the cemetery of his native village his
+shade can still hear the familiar accents of his native dialect. The
+great painter of Lorraine could never have slept his eternal sleep in
+any other soil than that.
+
+Painter of flowers, painter of nature, painter of the earth which is
+forever deathless and forever renewed, Bastien-Lepage has chosen that
+better part; his work will live as long as these, his models, and will
+go down through the centuries in all the splendour of increasing beauty
+and eternal youth.
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Typographical errors have been corrected as
+follows:
+
+Page 22: "Bastine" replaced with "Bastien"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bastien Lepage, by Fr. Crastre
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BASTIEN LEPAGE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 36533-8.txt or 36533-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/5/3/36533/
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Hunter Monroe and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/36533-8.zip b/36533-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f94f82d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-8.zip
diff --git a/36533-h.zip b/36533-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a320e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h.zip
diff --git a/36533-h/36533-h.htm b/36533-h/36533-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f518922
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/36533-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,1954 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bastien Lepage, by Fr. Crastre.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    h1,h2 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         clear: both;
+         }
+    .header   {font-size:x-large;
+               text-align: center;
+               font-weight: bold;}
+
+    .box       {text-align: center;
+               border: 1px solid;
+               width: 8em;}
+
+    hr.r65 {width: 65%; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 3em;}
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    .tdl      {text-align: left;}
+    .tdr      {text-align: right;}
+
+    body{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+                position: absolute;
+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
+                text-align: right;
+              } /* page numbers */
+
+
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+
+    .caption  {font-weight: bold;}
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+    .p2       {margin-top: 2em;}
+    .p4       {margin-top: 4em;}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bastien Lepage, by Fr. Crastre
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bastien Lepage
+
+Author: Fr. Crastre
+
+Translator: Frederic Taber Cooper
+
+Release Date: June 26, 2011 [EBook #36533]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BASTIEN LEPAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Hunter Monroe and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p>MASTERPIECES<br />
+IN COLOUR<br />
+EDITED BY <br />
+M. HENRY ROUJON</p>
+
+<h1 class="p2">BASTIEN-LEPAGE</h1>
+<h2>(1848-1884)</h2>
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<h2>IN THE SAME SERIES</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="series">
+<tr><td class="tdl">REYNOLDS</td><td class="tdl">CHARDIN</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">VELASQUEZ</td><td class="tdl">MILLET</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">GREUZE</td><td class="tdl">RAEBURN</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">TURNER</td><td class="tdl">SARGENT</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">BOTTICELLI</td><td class="tdl">CONSTABLE</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">ROMNEY</td><td class="tdl">MEMLING</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">REMBRANDT</td><td class="tdl">FRAGONARD</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">BELLINI</td><td class="tdl">DÜRER</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">FRA ANGELICO</td><td class="tdl">LAWRENCE</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">ROSSETTI</td><td class="tdl">HOGARTH</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">RAPHAEL</td><td class="tdl">WATTEAU</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">LEIGHTON</td><td class="tdl">MURILLO</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">HOLMAN HUNT</td><td class="tdl">WATTS</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">TITIAN</td><td class="tdl">INGRES</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">MILLAIS</td><td class="tdl">COROT</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">LUINI</td><td class="tdl">DELACROIX</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">FRANZ HALS</td><td class="tdl">FRA LIPPO LIPPI</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">CARLO DOLCI</td><td class="tdl">PUVIS DE CHAVANNES</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">GAINSBOROUGH</td><td class="tdl">MEISSONIER</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">TINTORETTO</td><td class="tdl">GÉRÔME</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">VAN DYCK</td><td class="tdl">VERONESE</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">DA VINCI</td><td class="tdl">VAN EYCK</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">WHISTLER</td><td class="tdl">FROMENTIN</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">RUBENS</td><td class="tdl">MANTEGNA</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">BOUCHER</td><td class="tdl">PERUGINO</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">HOLBEIN</td><td class="tdl">ROSA BONHEUR</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">BURNE-JONES</td><td class="tdl">BASTIEN-LEPAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">LE BRUN</td><td class="tdl">GOYA</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 320px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="320" height="412" alt="Cover" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter p4" style="width: 320px;"><a name="I" id="I"></a>
+<a href="images/illus04.jpg"><img src="images/illus04_thumb.jpg" width="320" height="460" alt="PLATE I." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><a href="images/illus04.jpg">PLATE I.&mdash;THE SONG OF SPRINGTIME</a></span></div>
+
+<p class="center"><small>(Museum at Verdun)</small></p>
+
+<p class="center">This is one of the artist's earliest works. A certain embarrassment
+may be noted in the manner in which the Cupids are treated; even
+at this period, it is easy to see that allegory is not suited to the precise
+and realistic talent of this painter; yet the young girl is
+designed with a vigour which already foreshadows the masterly art
+of Hay-making.</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<h2 class="p4">Bastien Lepage</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><b>BY FR. CRASTRE</b></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center"><small><b>TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH</b></small><br />
+<small><b>BY FREDERIC TABER COOPER</b></small></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center"><b>ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT</b><br />
+<b>REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR</b></p>
+
+<div class="p2 figcenter"><img src="images/illus05.jpg" width="320" height="297" alt="IN SEMPITERNUM" title="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center p2"><big><b>FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY</b></big>
+<big><b>NEW YORK&mdash;PUBLISHERS</b></big></p>
+
+<p class="p4 center">COPYRIGHT, <small>1914</small>, BY<br />
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY</p>
+
+<p class="p4 box">March, 1914</p>
+
+<p class="p4 center">THE&middot;PLIMPTON&middot;PRESS<br />
+NORWOOD&middot;MASS&middot;U&middot;S&middot;A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+<table class="p2" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="2" summary="contents">
+
+<tr><td colspan="2"><p class="header"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</p></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="tdr">Page</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_YOUTH">His Youth</a></td><td class="tdr">16</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_BEST_YEARS">His Best Years</a></td><td class="tdr">31</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_PREMATURE_END">His Premature End</a></td><td class="tdr">65</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="4"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr class="r65" />
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="2" summary="contents" class="p4">
+<tr><td colspan="4" ><p class="header">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">Plate</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="tdr">Page</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td><td class="tdl"><a href="#I">The Song of Springtime</a></td>
+<td class="tdl">Museum at Verdun</td><td class="tdr">Frontispiece</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">II. </td><td class="tdl"><a href="#II">Portrait of M. Wallon</a></td>
+<td class="tdl">Museum of the Louvre</td><td class="tdr">14</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">III. </td><td class="tdl"><a href="#III">The Artist's Mother</a></td>
+<td class="tdl">Collection of É. Bastien-Lepage</td><td class="tdr">24</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IV. </td><td class="tdl"><a href="#IV">The Hay-making</a></td>
+<td class="tdl">Museum of the Luxembourg</td><td class="tdr">34</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">V. </td><td class="tdl"><a href="#V">Portrait of M. Hayem</a></td>
+<td class="tdl">Museum of the Luxembourg</td><td class="tdr">40</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VI. </td><td class="tdl"><a href="#VI">Portrait of M. X&mdash;&mdash;</a></td>
+<td class="tdl">Museum at Verdun</td><td class="tdr">50</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VII. </td><td class="tdl"><a href="#VII">The Little Boatman</a></td>
+<td class="tdl">Collection of &Eacute;. Bastien-Lepage</td><td class="tdr">60</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VIII. </td><td class="tdl"><a href="#VIII">The Artist's Uncle</a></td>
+<td class="tdl">Museum at Verdun</td><td class="tdr">70</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"></td></tr>
+</table>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 160px;">
+<img src="images/illus11.png" width="160" height="200" alt="Page 11" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p>There are certain beings who bear the stamp
+of the divine seal and are preordained to
+receive the highest favours within the gift of glory;
+they are fated to pass through life like those brilliant
+meteors which are seen to flash across the
+heavens and disappear in the same instant. Bastien-Lepage
+was one of these meteors. But while the
+others leave behind them only a luminous trail<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+that swiftly vanishes, this rare artist, snatched so
+prematurely from the field of art, traced his
+passage in a furrow of dazzling splendour, the
+radiance of which has not even yet begun to fade.</p>
+
+<p>Bastien-Lepage was a painter in the noblest
+acceptation of the term; it may even be asserted
+that he would have exercised considerable influence
+upon the art of his epoch if Destiny had not
+stupidly mown down the sturdy flower of his
+genius in the very hour of its brightest blossoming.
+Born into this world with a solid tenacity
+of purpose which seems to be a special gift of
+the soil of Lorraine to her sons and daughters,
+he had a clear-cut and unalterable conception of
+what painting should be. His mind was receptive
+only of simple ideas, his eye perceived only
+visions that were tangible, such as were unobscured
+by any shadow or any artifice. He was
+the apostle of clearness, both in conception and
+in execution. Every time that he tried experimentally
+to turn aside from his chosen path, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+ceased to be himself, he fell below his own standards.
+What interested him most of all, in the life
+of this world which he observed so eagerly, as
+though he had a presentiment of his early end, was
+nature's most precise and most uncompromising
+manifestation, both in line and in relief; namely, the
+peasant and the environment which frames him.
+Having deliberately chosen such models, Bastien-Lepage
+could not pretend to be the painter of
+the Beautiful, nor did he ever become so. He
+did not even adorn his subjects with that special
+sort of idealism with which Millet embellished
+even his most uncouth rustic types, a slightly
+melancholy idealism obtained by a sombre toning
+down of colour, which Bastien-Lepage held in horror.
+His peasants stand out boldly, in the crude glare
+of flamboyant noontide, under a summer sun that
+refuses to leave hidden any part of their ugliness
+or their defects. He painted them as he saw
+them, with the searching rays striking them full
+in the face; and his brush was a stranger to any
+compromise, intolerant of even the slightest betterment,
+in the course of the literal transference of
+his model to his canvas. It made no difference
+how handsome or how homely a given subject
+might be, Bastien-Lepage would always render
+him precisely as nature, in a grudging or indulgent
+mood, had made him,&mdash;that is to say, truly
+and sincerely, with a precision that would be
+almost photographic, if the minuteness of his
+technique were not ennobled by the high quality
+of his art. With such gifts, Bastien-Lepage was
+foreordained to be a marvellous interpreter of
+rural life, and such he was in the highest degree; in
+like manner, he could not fail to become a portrait
+painter of the first order, and it was in this
+capacity also that he enrolled himself among the
+most interesting and vigorous artists of our epoch.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 320px;"><a name="II" id="II"></a>
+<a href="images/illus15.jpg"><img class="p2" src="images/illus15_thumb.jpg" width="320" height="416" alt="PLATE II" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><a href="images/illus15.jpg">PLATE II.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF M. WALLON</a></span></div>
+
+<p class="center"><small>(Museum at Verdun)</small></p>
+
+<p class="center">Few artists have been able to endow their models with such
+an animated expression of life. All the keenness, intelligence and
+austerity of this prominent personage, known by the name of
+Father of the Constitution, are eloquently transferred to this page,
+with a sobriety of means that still further emphasizes its vigour.</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+<h2 class="p2"><a name="HIS_YOUTH" id="HIS_YOUTH"></a>HIS YOUTH</h2>
+
+<p>Jules Bastien-Lepage was born at Damvillers,
+in the department of the Meuse, on the first of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+November, 1848. His parents were of the well-to-do
+farming class, occupied from one year's end
+to the other with the work of the fields. Consequently,
+all the early boyhood of the artist was
+passed in daily contact with the soil of Lorraine
+and with the sons of that soil. He knew them,
+one and all, in his native village; he grew up among
+them; he went to school side by side with the
+other little rustics of his own age: he understood
+the peasant class, with all their faults, their virtues,
+their habits of life; he learned to read in
+their faces, which were a sealed book to the outsider,
+the opinions and emotions which they had
+in common with him.</p>
+
+<p>These childhood impressions were destined to
+abide with him throughout his life; he cherished
+to the end a fervent love for his native land,
+and he felt that he had an infinitely noble task in
+painting that life of the fields which the Second
+Empire affected to despise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But though he came of peasant stock, it was
+Bastien-Lepage's good fortune that these same
+peasants were in prosperous circumstances and
+could afford to give him an education. They were
+ambitious for him; and it hurt them to see their
+little Jules, who was so wide-awake, so intelligent,
+and at the same time so frail, leading the hard
+and monotonous life of the fields, following the
+plough, tilling the soil. It needed only a few
+household economies to enable him to continue his
+studies; so, when the time came, young Bastien-Lepage
+wended his way towards Verdun, where he
+entered upon his college course.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing that marks in any particular
+way these years of study, nothing to indicate that
+the boy was a youthful prodigy, nor that he showed
+any special aptitude for drawing. But he was
+studious, diligent, and anxious to avoid repremands
+and to fulfil the expectations of his parents.
+In due time he obtained his bachelor's degree,
+which at that period was highly prized. His father,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+filled with pride, already began to form brilliant
+projects for his future, already foresaw him a
+distinguished official, supervising some great branch
+of the public service. As a matter of fact, a
+position was found for the young baccalaureate
+in a government department which was neither
+the most desirable nor the one of least importance;
+namely, the Post Office Department. Bastien-Lepage
+was not vastly delighted with the
+choice, but, dutiful son that he was, he accepted the
+modest clerkship offered him. One circumstance
+contributed, in a large degree, towards overcoming
+his reluctance: the post assigned to him from
+the start was in Paris, of which he had often heard
+marvellous things, and in which he hoped that he
+would be able to follow his secret inclination. For,
+in the interval his vocation had revealed itself; he
+had conceived a passion for drawing, for colouring,
+for painting; and, like Correggio, he was
+eager to say in his turn, "I too am a painter!"</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly he set forth, leaving behind him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+no suspicion of his purpose. Upon arriving at
+the capital, he acquitted himself scrupulously of
+his official duties, but every leisure moment was
+consecrated to visiting the museums and exhibitions.
+He saturated himself with the wealth of
+beauty strewn broadcast through the Louvre, and
+was thrilled with admiration at contact with the
+masters of every school and country. He did not
+care equally for them all, in spite of their genius;
+his intimate preferences leaned to the side of
+Flemish rather than Italian art; but he was not
+insensible to the lofty inspiration, the severe harmony,
+the faultless composition, which have made
+the great masters of the Renaissance the most
+astonishing prodigies in the history of painting.</p>
+
+<p>But while the older schools of art delighted
+him, he followed with no less attention the movement
+of contemporary painting. At the hour when
+his critical spirit awoke, certain new elements and
+new formulas had come to light and had been put
+into practice by two audacious and gifted artists<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+by the names of Courbet and Manet. Although
+the prolonged struggle between the classicists and
+romanticists had not yet come to an end, these
+two rival schools were entrenched in their positions
+and refused to stir forth from them. Supporters
+of Delacroix and of Ingres confined themselves
+strictly to their respective hostile formulas, doing
+nothing either to expand or to rejuvenate them.
+Whoever dared to venture outside of one of these
+two beaten tracks was regarded as a madman, and
+his attempts were greeted with derisive clamours
+by both parties, who declared a momentary
+truce, for the purpose of annihilating him by a
+joint attack. Courbet, who was scorned by Ingres,
+met with equally harsh criticism from Delacroix;
+and as for Manet, he had managed to call down
+universal wrath upon his head, and at the Salon
+of 1863 it became necessary to place his <i>Olympia</i>
+in the very topmost line upon the wall, in order to
+protect it from the fury of the public, hounded on
+by the hue and cry of the critics.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+Bastien-Lepage made mental notes of all the
+episodes of this struggle; he listened to the criticisms
+and passed them through the crucible of his
+unspoiled mind, in the presence of the very works
+under indictment. His good sense showed him how
+large an element of injustice entered into these
+hostilities. Moreover, his peasant blood inclined
+him to sympathize with those artists who refused
+to bind themselves to seek for beauty only within
+the limits of academic form, and who had the
+ability to make it flash forth from the humblest
+and even the most vulgar type of subject. Furthermore,
+this constant study of matters pertaining to
+art, day by day added fuel to the hidden fire
+smouldering within him; he was conscious of its
+mounting flame. Back of the rude sketches, drawn
+and coloured in the tiny chamber befitting an
+humble postal clerk, he perceived vaguely that he
+also possessed the temperament of a painter, and
+little by little he witnessed the unfolding of his
+artist's soul.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 320px;"><a name="III" id="III"></a>
+<a href="images/illus27.jpg"><img class="p2" src="images/illus27_thumb.jpg" width="320" height="430" alt="Plate III" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><a href="images/illus27.jpg">PLATE III.&mdash;THE ARTIST&#39;S MOTHER</a></span></div>
+
+<p class="center"><small>(Collection of &Eacute;. Bastien-Lepage)</small></p>
+
+<p class="center">What a kindly and gentle face this is, the face of the woman to
+whom the artist applied the tender endearment of &quot;Good little
+mother&quot;! In this work, it is evident that the heart guided the
+hand of the painter. None but a son could have rendered with
+such emotion the humid tenderness of those eyes and the maternal
+caress of those lips. It is a powerful work, which enrolls Bastien-Lepage
+in the foremost rank of portrait painters.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p4">At last, unable to bear it longer, he resigned
+from the postal service and enrolled his name at
+the Beaux-Arts. At this time, when he entered
+the studio of Cabanel, he was but little more than
+nineteen years of age. Cabanel, to be sure, was
+not the painter of his choice, but Bastien-Lepage
+was not for that reason any the less appreciative
+of a system of instruction which was dominated
+by a worship of line-work. His training under
+Cabanel was not without value to the young artist,
+who throughout his life, even in his most realistic
+paintings, proved himself to be an impeccable
+master of design.</p>
+
+<p>At the outset, however, he was beset with
+difficulties. Now that his salary as a postal clerk
+had ceased and remittances from the family were
+necessarily restricted, Bastien-Lepage exerted himself
+to gain a living by his own efforts. He had
+no lack of courage, and he had in addition that
+Lorraine tenacity which enabled him to confront
+all difficulties with tranquil assurance. He worked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+with desperate energy, and in the intervals of
+respite from his labours he overran all Paris in
+search of orders from business houses. It was an
+inglorious task, but at least it enabled him to live;
+thus it happened that about 1873 he produced a
+widely circulated advertisement for a perfumery
+house. Up to this time he had remained wholly
+unknown; and although he had already exhibited
+one painting, at the Salon of 1870, it was passed by
+unheeded both by the critics and the general public.</p>
+
+<p>This lack of success in no wise discouraged him,
+for he had faith. It was in the year 1874 that
+he exhibited <i>The Song of Springtime</i>. It was a
+veritable revelation. There was no neglect this
+time. The public gathered in throngs before his
+canvas, and the critics, notwithstanding a few
+objections to details, were lavish in their praise
+and hailed him as having the qualities of a true
+artist. Naturally, the picture was not perfect,
+but it well merited the flattering reception which
+it received. In a springtime landscape a young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+peasant girl is seated beneath a tree, looking before
+her over a sunlit plain. Around her skirts a
+whole bevy of Cupids are gathering blossoms and
+offering them to the girl. Here, at the first stroke,
+is an assertion of the young painter's independence,
+his formal determination to emancipate himself
+from the accepted formulas in his treatment of
+the eternal theme of a young girl's soul, opening
+to the first appeal of love. As a matter of fact,
+the allegory is somewhat clumsy; you realize that
+the author's talent does not run to sentimental
+compositions. Yet the young girl is brushed in
+with an energetic hand, and all that rather coarse
+robustness that distinguishes the women of peasant
+stock is blended in a masterly manner with the
+na&iuml;ve innocence of simple souls. <i>The Song of
+Springtime</i> was Bastien-Lepage's first attempt in
+that vein of realistic painting in which he was
+soon destined to excel.</p>
+
+<p>That same year he produced <i>Grandfather's
+Portrait</i>, which also attracted much attention.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+The artist had placed his model in the little garden
+adjoining the home of his birth. This portrait,
+which belongs to-day to the painter's brother, is
+remarkable for its naturalness, its touch of intimate
+understanding, and its vigour of execution.</p>
+
+<p>Bastien-Lepage had now acquired a name. His
+<i>Song of Springtime</i> won him a third class medal,
+and the State purchased the painting for the
+museum at Verdun, where it at present hangs.</p>
+
+<p>In the following year he exhibited <i>Her First
+Communion</i>, picturing a young and pretty country
+girl, stiff and self-conscious under her white
+veil. This work was the product of keen observation,
+and is deliberately stilted and traditional
+in its style of execution, recalling in some measure
+the French primitive school. Bastien-Lepage
+evidently had in mind the portraits by Fran&ccedil;ois
+Cluet: his little communicant is infinitely artificial
+in her spotless finery, yet infinitely alive
+under the thin surface wash of colour which
+recalls the <i>Elizabeth of Austria</i>, wife of Charles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+IX, as painted by the greatest of the French
+primitives.</p>
+
+<p>Simultaneously with this picture he exhibited
+the <i>Portrait of M. Hayem</i>, in which the vigorous
+treatment of the face, with its clear, firm colour
+tones and sober workmanship, proclaimed him
+already a portrait painter of the first order.</p>
+
+<p>His success this time was more marked: he
+received a medal of the second class. A less
+modest artist would have allowed himself to be
+borne tranquilly along by the mounting tide of
+glory; but Bastien-Lepage did not yet feel that
+he was sufficiently sure of himself. He wished
+to continue for a while longer, working, learning,
+perfecting himself; he even conceived the idea,
+in spite of his renown, of competing for the
+<i>Prix de Rome</i>. Accordingly, the painter of <i>The
+Song of Springtime</i> and <i>Her First Communion</i>
+might shortly after have been seen entering the
+lists like any ordinary nobody. He obtained only
+the second prize.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He presented himself again the following year,
+but with no better success. The subject assigned
+for the competition was <i>Priam at the Feet of
+Achilles</i>. It is easy to understand that such a
+theme was little calculated to inspire an artist of
+Bastien-Lepage's temperament; he found it impossible
+to attain full development unless in the
+presence of nature herself. No amount of manual
+dexterity can take the place of inborn faith, and
+the young artist had no faith in antiquity; he
+never could muster any enthusiasm for the Greek
+or Roman gods, nor for historic scenes in which the
+very attitudes are dictated by the rules and regulations
+of time-honoured tradition.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the work is not without merit;
+it is forceful, its colouring is good, and it falls short
+of perfection only in failing to conform sufficiently
+with what we know of ancient life. This painting
+is at present to be found in the Museum at Lille.</p>
+
+<p>This rebuff did not discourage Bastien-Lepage
+unreasonably; but he decided to confine himself
+in the future to painting portraits and picturing the
+life of the fields.</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+<h2 class="p2"><a name="HIS_BEST_YEARS" id="HIS_BEST_YEARS"></a>HIS BEST YEARS</h2>
+
+<p>The same year that he failed for the second
+time in the competition for the <i>Prix de Rome</i>,
+Bastien-Lepage painted <i>The Portrait of M. Wallon</i>,
+which is one of his most important works as a
+portrait painter. In spite of its tendency towards
+naturalism, this canvas was nevertheless still conceived
+in accordance with the established technique,
+and the keen and serious visage of the Father
+of the Constitution standing out against its sombre
+background is a fine study in chiaroscuro.</p>
+
+<p>But the following year he struck the naturalistic
+note more strongly in his <i>Portrait of Lady L.</i>,
+the only full-length, life-sized portrait that he
+ever painted; and he declared himself plainly
+and definitely a realist in his picture entitled <i>My
+Parents</i>. It would be impossible to find two
+figures more life-like, more literal, or painted with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+greater sincerity. This canvas amounted to a
+declaration of principles; for an artist whom filial
+piety cannot turn aside from the truth will never
+make sacrifices to convention: he will never consent
+to embellish or idealize his models through
+tricks of his craft; he will paint them as he sees
+them, without correcting any of the imperfections
+and ugliness with which nature has afflicted them.
+How clearly we recognize that these likenesses of
+Bastien-Lepage's parents are absolutely true to
+life, and how much better we like them as they
+are, in the simple intimacy of daily life, than if
+they had been decked out, all spick and span, as
+a less scrupulous artist would inevitably have shown
+them to us!</p>
+
+<p>Bastien-Lepage's brother, himself a painter of
+some talent, has preserved in his studio at Neuilly
+a certain number of the artist's works, which he
+surrounds with pious care and feelingly exhibits
+to occasional visitors. The family portraits are
+there, pulsating with life and radiating that gener<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>ous
+peasant kindliness which finds expression in
+a broad and tender smile. The father, seated in a
+chair in his garden, an old man with shrewd yet
+friendly eyes, seems so real, so actual, that we
+almost expect him to step down from his frame
+to bid us welcome. And what a marvel the <i>Portrait
+of my Mother</i> is, which forms a companion
+piece on the same wall! A somewhat wistful
+charm pervades this face, with its deeply graven
+lines, and an infinite tenderness, a true mother's
+tenderness, hovers over the thin, pale lips.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 320px;"><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>
+<a href="images/illus31.jpg"><img class="p2" src="images/illus31_thumb.jpg" width="320" height="293" alt="PLATE IV" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><a href="images/illus31.jpg">PLATE IV&mdash;HAY-MAKING</a></span></div>
+
+<p class="center"><small>(Museum of the Luxembourg)</small></p>
+
+<p class="center">
+A masterpiece of contemporary painting, because of the truth of
+its attitudes and the vigour of its execution. It would be impossible
+to render more forcibly the blissfulness of rest when the body has
+been racked by the exhausting labour of the soil. In this picture,
+Bastien-Lepage revealed himself as an incomparable painter of
+rural life.</p>
+
+<p class="p4">Perhaps this is the moment, in the presence
+of these pictures, to emphasize Bastien-Lepage's
+great value as a colourist. Few contemporary
+painters have used colour with so much tact,
+such veritable mastery as he. Others have employed
+more dazzling tonal schemes and have
+achieved more gorgeous effects, but no one has
+rendered with such exact truth the tints of the
+flesh, the grayish folds of wrinkles, the profound
+light of the eye. And his colour is always clear,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+always unmistakably employed to produce a sought-after
+effect. There is no artifice, no trick-work,
+it is all straightforward, honest, precise; the opposition
+of light and shade never result in opacity,
+bitumen plays no part in his canvases, the astonishing
+relief of which is obtained by means of
+such perfect simplicity that it recalls the inimitable
+technique of Correggio.</p>
+
+<p>In 1878 he exhibited <i>Hay-making</i>, that magisterial
+page from the life of the fields which to-day
+is the pride of the Luxembourg museum, and
+which the art of the engraver has scattered broadcast
+to the extent of millions of copies.</p>
+
+<p>This picture represents a vast sun-bathed
+meadow, overstrewn with new-mown hay and
+punctuated, here and there, by the rounded cones
+of the stacks. Against the blue background of the
+sky, green hill-tops trace an undulant line. In the
+foreground a robust, bony-armed country-woman
+is seated on the grass, her legs stretched out before
+her in an attitude expressive of the utter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+weariness resulting from the work performed. Her
+head, solidly planted on her massive neck, is a
+marvel of realism; in her vulgar peasant face
+we may read health, strength, and a sort of dulled
+mentality born of physical fatigue. In every fibre
+of her exhausted body the woman is veritably
+resting, and through her half-parted lips it seems
+as though we could detect the passage of her
+hurried breathing. The man beside her, no less
+worn out than she, is stretched at full length on
+the thick couch of grass, and with his hat over
+his face, to shelter it from the sun, he is sleeping
+as though dead to the world.</p>
+
+<p>Every detail of this canvas is perfect, because
+every detail is true, drawn straight from life, the
+fruit of minute observation. In it Bastien-Lepage
+once more affirms his predilection for the open
+country; and nothing could be more impressive
+than these two uncouth, vulgar, homely human
+beings, set amid the splendour of a meadow turned
+golden by the sun. It is an every-day spectacle; it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+would not seem at first sight to contain material
+for a picture. But Bastien-Lepage has succeeded
+in proving indisputably that beauty does not consist
+solely in the harmony of the body, but in
+the impression which emanates from scenes that
+are most humble in outward appearance. In these
+few square feet of canvas the artist has summed up,
+perhaps without intending it, all the majesty of
+nature and all the grandeur of the life of the fields.
+It is scarcely necessary to add that this work is
+a transcript of the soil of Lorraine, that good
+natal soil which he loved so profoundly and to
+which he returned eagerly, year after year.</p>
+
+<p>Bastien-Lepage was exclusively the painter of
+the rural aspects of Lorraine; he loved its horizons,
+its fertile and undulating plains. And when,
+occasionally, he ventured into allegory, the background
+was still Lorraine, and the characters were
+developed in the familiar setting of his native
+village, Damvillers. And how he loved it! How
+he enjoyed the warm atmosphere of affection
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+which always awaited him when his father, grandfather,
+and valiant and devoted "little mother"
+gathered at night around the family table! He
+made his home in Paris, because residence there
+was indispensable, both for business and artistic
+reasons; but the moment that he could escape
+from the capital and its constraints, he would go
+to rest and gather new energy in the midst of
+the family circle. He had a spacious studio installed
+in the second story of the ancestral home;
+and there he worked, absolutely happy so long
+as he could see the old grandfather at his side,
+pipe in mouth, examining the work with a knowing
+air, and the father and mother in a sort of ecstasy,
+as they watched him fill in his canvas.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 320px;"><a name="V" id="V"></a>
+<a href="images/illus47.jpg"><img class="p2" src="images/illus47_thumb.jpg" width="320" height="353" alt="PLATE V" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><a href="images/illus47.jpg">PLATE V.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF M. HAYEM</a></span></div>
+
+<p class="center"><small>(Museum of the Luxembourg)</small></p>
+
+<p class="center">A marvel of discernment and of rendering. The face, to be sure,
+has a strong originality; but there is no slight merit in having expressed
+with such striking truth the piercing intelligence of the
+eyes that twinkle behind the lenses of the spectacles, and the energy,
+tempered with satiric humour, of his whole odd physiognomy.</p>
+
+<p class="p4">Nevertheless, Bastien-Lepage was no studio
+painter; it was not from the height of a window
+that he chose to contemplate nature, but in the
+open fields, in the very heart of the furrows; and
+it was there also, in the midst of the wheat and
+the rye, that he set up his easel and painted his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+peasants in action, in the daily fulfilment of their
+thankless task. And by picturing them thus, without
+artifice, in all their simplicity of gesture and
+coarseness of feature, he imbued his canvases with
+a profound spirit of poetry, through which the
+often brutal realism of his subjects was redeemed
+and ennobled. In the presence of these peasants
+he experienced a joy more genuine than he had
+ever felt before the rarest canvases in any museum.
+Not that he denied or disdained the genius of the
+great ancestors of painting; he had too much
+reverence for his art ever to dream of doing so.
+But when it came to a question of training, he
+could learn more from nature than from them.
+Listen to his own exposition of his ideas:</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity," he wrote, "that we are initiated,
+whether we will or not, into traditions and
+routines, under the pretext that this is the way
+to train us to be artists! It would be so simple
+to teach the use of brush and palette, without
+ever once mentioning the name of Michelangelo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+or Raphael or Murillo or Domenichino! We could
+then go home, back to Brittany or Gascony,
+Lorraine or Normandy, and peacefully paint the
+portrait of our own province; and if some morning
+the book we had chanced to read aroused the
+wish to paint a Prodigal Son, or Priam at the feet
+of Achilles, we could reconstruct the scene to suit
+ourselves, without needing to resort to the museums,
+taking the setting from our own surroundings and
+making use of the models close at hand, as though
+the old drama dated only from yesterday. That
+is the way for an artist to succeed in breathing
+the breath of life into his art and in making it
+beautiful and appealing to the eyes of the whole
+world. And that is the goal towards which I am
+striving with all my strength."</p>
+
+<p>As painter of the open air, he became in a
+certain sense the founder of a school, without
+meaning to be; for his conception of the painter's
+art won over a whole group of young artists who
+united in hailing him as their master. Each year<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+his offerings to the Salon were impatiently awaited,
+and his followers gathered in full force before them,
+discussing, comparing, acclaiming; each Salon became
+the occasion for a new success, the critics
+were unanimous in praising him, the public adopted
+his pictures for their own, because they could
+understand his clear and rigorous manner. Whatever
+hostility he met with was among his own
+colleagues, at least among such of them as were discouraged
+and humiliated by his vigorous originality.
+Nevertheless, the Exposition of 1878, at which he
+had gathered together all his works, was an especially
+triumphant occasion for him; yet when the
+awards were distributed, he discovered that he had
+received nothing but a medal of the third class.</p>
+
+<p>At the Salon of 1879, Bastien-Lepage exhibited
+his <i>Women gathering Potatoes</i>, which formed a
+companion piece to his <i>Hay-making</i>. Here again
+we have the landscape of Lorraine and the eternal
+and infinitely varied theme of rural labour. In a
+sun-parched field two women are toiling to reap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+the harvest of potatoes. While the one in the
+middle distance is stooping to turn up the ripe
+bulbs from the soil, the other, placed in the foreground,
+is striving to empty the contents of her
+basket into a sack which she holds open by a
+wonderfully natural movement of her knee. Nothing
+could be simpler or more humble than this
+subject, and yet one feels drawn towards it, conquered
+by the truth of these two figures, both in
+their attitude and their expression. Involuntarily
+memory conjures up another canvas, <i>The Gleaners</i>,
+and we realize that it is impossible to resist that
+higher appeal which the great artists succeed in
+giving to the most commonplace episode of farming
+life. But, unlike Millet, Bastien-Lepage does
+not awaken in us any compassion for these beings
+who toil, stooping above the earth; no touch of
+bitterness saddens his pictures, and the types
+which he shows to us have the healthy vigour of
+peasants who live their lives in the open air and
+love the soil which nourishes them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This picture, when it appeared, produced a
+sensation. Coming directly after the <i>Hay-making</i>,
+it definitely established Bastien-Lepage's talent and
+placed him in the foremost rank of painters of
+rural life. The critics hailed this powerful canvas
+with enthusiasm. Th&eacute;odore de Banville, writing
+of the Salon of 1879, said: "M. Bastien-Lepage is
+the king of this Exposition. Young as he is, he has
+started in to produce masterpieces: he is very
+wise! For in later years an artist continues to
+copy himself, with more or less cleverness and
+success; but the creative genius has taken wing,
+like a bird on whose tail we have failed to drop
+the indispensable grain of salt. The <i>October
+Season</i> pictures the harvesting of potatoes. The
+earth, the encompassing air as far as we can see,
+the sky, the solitude laden with silence, are all
+evoked for us in this picture by the sincerity of its
+powerful painter; the peasant women are done
+in a masterly manner, and precisely for the reason
+that he has seen them apart from all convention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+and has not tried to idealize them by any hackneyed
+device."</p>
+
+<p>Albert Wolff was no less enthusiastic: "The
+colouring in <i>Women harvesting Potatoes</i> is ingratiating
+and discreet; not a discordant touch
+disturbs the beautiful harmony of this canvas,
+over which the silence of the open country has
+descended, enveloping the obscure toil. It is only
+artists of superior powers who can embody so much
+charm in a single conception."</p>
+
+<p>Another feature of the same Salon was his
+magnificent portrait of <i>Madame Sarah Bernhardt</i>,
+a marvel of expression and of delicate art, embodied
+in a pale symphony of tenderest whites,
+blending harmoniously with the warmest tones of
+gold. The great tragic actress is portrayed draped,
+almost swathed, in a gown of white china silk,
+verging on the faintest yellowish caste; she is
+posed in profile, that cameo-like profile that has
+so often been portrayed. She is seated, with a sort
+of intentional rigidity, on a white fur robe, and is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+examining a statuette of Orpheus, in old ivory,
+which she holds in her hands. Her expressive and
+intellectual features are treated with a vigour
+which does full justice to the classic beauty and
+virile energy of the sitter.</p>
+
+<p>"The work as a whole," wrote the critic of
+the <i>Revue des Beaux-Arts</i>, "possesses supreme
+distinction and an admirable delicacy of colouring.
+The silvery tones of the whites, the warm grays
+of the draped gown lead up to the freshness of the
+delicate, rose-like flesh tints, beneath the crown of
+close curled locks that seem at once massive and
+weightless. The artist's hand was sure of itself;
+it neither groped nor hesitated. The execution is
+such that the drawing of the gown and the lines
+of the face seem to have been traced by an engraver's
+tool. In this case, however, definiteness
+has not resulted in stiffness. The sharp design has
+not imprisoned unwilling forms; it leaves them
+free to move as they please within the limits of
+their contours which are its domain. It is worth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+while to examine with a lens the marvellous process
+which, by the aid of imperceptible half-tones, has
+softened the modelling of the face and hands."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 320px;"><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>
+<a href="images/illus59.jpg"><img class="p2" src="images/illus59_thumb.jpg" width="320" height="410" alt="PLATE VI" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><a href="images/illus59.jpg">PLATE VI.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF M. X&mdash;&mdash;</a></span></div>
+
+<p class="center"><small>(Museum at Verdun)</small></p>
+
+<p class="center">Bastien-Lepage possessed the rare quality of being able to
+bestow the same superior skill upon every part of a portrait. Being
+sincere before all else, he never tried to shirk any difficulty; this is
+seen in the care he took in painting the hands of all his various
+sitters, showing something akin to vanity in the marvellous talent
+he displayed in rendering them. In this portrait&mdash;just as in all
+the others&mdash;the hands are quite as truly a miracle of execution
+as the face itself.</p>
+
+<p class="p4">These two pictures earned Bastien-Lepage the
+Cross of the Legion of Honour and a definite
+recognition of his talent. The artist could not
+keep his delight to himself and, good son that he
+was, wished to share it with his beloved family;
+so he sent for them, to pay him a visit in Paris.
+The grandfather and the "good little mother"
+arrived, full of pride in this famous son, of whom
+the whole world was talking. He showed them
+the sights of the city and was only too happy to
+have a chance to introduce them to his friends;
+he took his mother to the big shops and insisted
+on choosing silk cloaks and silk dresses for her.
+The poor woman protested, saying that they were
+far too fine, that she would never dare to wear
+anything like that. "Show us some more," ordered
+the devoted artist, "I want mamma to have her
+choice of the best there is!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After the old people had returned home to
+Lorraine, Bastien-Lepage set out for England,
+where he was to paint the portrait of the Prince
+of Wales, who afterwards became King Edward VII.</p>
+
+<p>In this portrait of tiny dimensions the Prince
+is represented in fancy costume, after the manner
+of Holbein. His garments recall in a measure those
+worn by King Henry VIII, in the celebrated portrait
+done by the great painter from Basle. The
+Collar of the Golden Fleece is displayed upon his
+breast. In the background of the picture may be
+seen dimly, through a veil of mist, the panorama
+of London and the gray ribbon of the Thames.
+The portrait is a little gem, which Bastien-Lepage
+wrought with the minuteness and affectedly hieratic
+mannerism of Holbein and the French primitive
+school. Although at present in possession of M.
+&Eacute;mile Bastien-Lepage, it will eventually find its
+place, together with a goodly number of other canvases,
+in the museum of the Louvre, to which the
+brother of the great artist intends to bequeath them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It should be mentioned here, in connection
+with this work, that Bastien-Lepage continued to
+make more and more of a specialty of portraits
+of reduced dimensions, and that he acquired in
+this respect a reputation of the first order. He
+loved these little canvases, scarcely larger than
+miniatures, and he expended on their scanty surfaces
+an inimitable skill; he embellished them with
+a wealth of accessory detail which brings to mind,
+as we look at them to-day, the formidable labours
+of the illuminators of the middle ages. But this
+goldsmith's work, far from impairing the effect of
+the whole, adds a certain fascination to it. And
+he expended upon the study of the face the same
+degree of devotion that he gave to the rendering
+of a garment. His models relive with an intensity
+of life such as could be expressed only by an artist
+who has made a life-long study of nature in her
+minutest manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>To name over his portraits would be to mention
+an equal number of masterpieces. The catalogue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+would be too long, for Bastien-Lepage was an
+indefatigable workman. We may content ourselves
+with citing those that are most widely known:
+that of <i>M. Andrieux</i>, one-time Prefect of Police,
+whose refined features are rendered with striking
+truth; that of <i>J. Bastien-Lepage</i>, the artist's
+uncle, which is here reproduced and which shows
+him violin in hand, a clear and vigorous piece of
+brush-work, transcribing life in telling strokes,
+with an astonishing simplicity of means. This fine
+example is to be seen to-day in the museum at
+Verdun. And in the same museum there is still
+another that deserves mention; namely, the excellent
+<i>Portrait of M. X.</i> And we must not forget
+the <i>Portrait of Andr&eacute; Theuriet</i>, born, like Bastien-Lepage,
+on the banks of the Meuse and attached
+to the painter by ties of almost fraternal affection.
+One feels that, in this picture, the heart must
+have guided the hand, for it would be difficult to
+find another work more magisterial in execution
+and more delicate in finish. And lastly, there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+<i>Mme. Bastien-Lepage</i>, the "good little mother,"
+as the great artist and loving son used to call her.
+He posed her in the garden of the home at Damvillers.
+She is seated on a stone bench; on her
+knees rests a large garden hat; her two hands are
+crossed, one over the other, and in the left she
+holds a little bunch of field flowers. She is clad
+in a loose dress of sombre colour, cut with a pelerine;
+and nothing but the one bright spot formed
+by the white collar reveals the severity of the
+costume. The whole attitude of the body in repose
+is perfect in its truth and naturalness; but our
+admiration changes and quickens to emotion when
+we raise our eyes to the level of the face of this
+"good little mother," a bony, irregular face, almost
+ugly, but so gentle, so kind, so touchingly illumined
+by the tender caress in the eyes as they rest upon
+the adored son in the course of painting her.
+Those emaciated features, which not even the
+crown of blonde hair is able to rejuvenate, are
+unmistakably those of a mother; if we had not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+known, we should inevitably have divined it; no
+one but a son, and a great artist as well, could
+have crowned the brow of a woman with such an
+aureole of gentleness and love.</p>
+
+<p>Bastien-Lepage, whom those who envied him
+affected to regard as dedicated wholly to the
+reproduction of rustic uncouthness, had no equal
+in catching the radiance of feminine charms, even
+in their subtlest manifestations. No one was more
+skilled than he in seizing and recording the one
+particular trait, often elusive and intangible, which
+characterizes a woman and makes her beautiful.
+What delicious portraits of women we owe to
+him! Where could we meet with a more smiling
+image than that of <i>Mme. Godillot</i>, radiant and
+seductive, a rosy vision in the black velvet of her
+gown, relieved by the brilliant sheen of her white
+satin corsage! And what studied and elaborate
+art was expended on the <i>Portrait of Mme. Klotz</i>,
+whose magnificent brunette beauty emerges like
+a gorgeous lily from the surrounding whiteness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+her scarf, that is all the more dazzlingly white by
+contrast with her sombre robe! And still again,
+there is the <i>Portrait of Mme. Juliette Drouet</i>,
+another beautiful and noble specimen of portraiture.
+And how marvellously Bastien-Lepage could detect
+the hidden soul lurking in the inmost recesses of
+his models and reveal it behind the transparent
+screen of their eyes! If Bastien-Lepage had not
+achieved eternal glory as an interpreter of rural
+life, he would still have remained celebrated as a
+portrait painter.</p>
+
+<p>But to Bastien-Lepage portrait painting was
+only a side issue, a form of relaxation between
+two landscapes; his predilection, his one object in
+life, so to speak, was to return constantly to his
+peasants, his scenes of toil, his fields of Lorraine.</p>
+
+<p>After his return from England he passed some
+months at Damvillers, when an impulse seized
+him to visit Italy, to which the verdict of a prejudiced
+committee had once upon a time barred
+his way. He proceeded straight to Venice, and it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+may as well be acknowledged at once, Venetian
+art left him cold, if not indifferent. He had never
+in the least understood any of the big "set pieces,"
+and in spite of all the art of Veronese and Titian,
+in spite of their dazzling flare of colour, he never
+succeeded in understanding their sumptuous allegories
+or in accepting the fantastic interpretation
+of nature which the Venetians allowed themselves.
+He returned to Damvillers, profoundly disillusioned
+and more than ever convinced that nature alone,
+such as he saw it, was deserving of the attention
+of the true artist. There would be no object in
+discussing here how rightly or how ill founded
+such an opinion was; we note it only to indicate
+once more the absolute independence of the painter,
+his fixed determination never to imitate anyone.</p>
+
+<p>And, beyond question, there is no resemblance
+to any other painter in that curious and remarkable
+picture known as <i>Jeanne d'Arc listening to the
+Voices</i>. Lorraine in heart and soul, Bastien-Lepage
+desired to pay his tribute, as so many had done
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+before him, to the glorious heroine who, like him,
+had come from the banks of the Meuse. And he
+wished also to restore her to her natural setting,
+with the greatest degree of historic accuracy.
+Consequently it is in a Lorraine garden surrounding
+a Lorraine cottage that he shows us Jeanne,
+the shepherdess; around her are the familiar garden
+utensils such as peasants use to-day just as they
+did in the fifteenth century. She is standing in
+an inspired and attentive attitude, which gives to
+her whole countenance that forceful character which
+Bastien-Lepage imprints upon all his compatriots.
+For he wished to make her, in a certain sense, a
+composite type of the women of the Lorraine
+race, such as Theuriet has described: "The forehead
+low but intelligent, the eyes with drooping
+lids that half conceal the somewhat sullen glance;
+the bones prominent in cheek and jaw, the chin
+square, indicative of an opinionated race; the
+mouth large, with half parted lips, through which
+one perceives the passage of the deep-drawn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+breath." This head is always the same; under
+all the variations in physiognomy we always
+meet with the same local type: it is the head of
+the woman in <i>Hay-making</i> and of the <i>Women
+gathering Potatoes</i>, and it is also that of the
+"good little mother," so fundamentally and emphatically
+representative of Lorraine.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 320px;"><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>
+<a href="images/illus71.jpg"><img class="p2" src="images/illus71_thumb.jpg" width="320" height="286" alt="PLATE VII" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><a href="images/illus71.jpg">PLATE VII.&mdash;THE LITTLE CHIMNEY-SWEEP</a></span></div>
+
+<p class="center"><small>(Collection of &Eacute;. Bastien-Lepage)</small></p>
+
+<p class="center">This attractive picture, full of charm and vigour, belongs to the
+closing years of the artist&#39;s life, at the time when he was enjoying
+the flood tide of his talent. How much force and truth there is in
+this picture of the little chimney-sweep, and what graceful nimbleness
+in the movements of the cats that he is watching at play.</p>
+
+<p class="p4">Nevertheless <i>Jeanne d'Arc listening to the
+Voices</i> was rather badly received by the critics.
+Without disputing the originality and vigour of
+the inspired shepherdess, they reproached the artist
+for the presence of the traditional saints. Bastien-Lepage
+had indicated these under the form of
+luminous vapour, radiating through the branches
+overhanging the garden: St. Michael in the golden
+armour of a knight of the fifteenth century, St.
+Margaret and St. Catherine as phantoms so diaphanous
+as to be hardly perceptible. The idealists
+complained that the picture was lacking in idealism;
+the realists were somewhat disconcerted to
+find the apparitions there at all. It must be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+acknowledged that Bastien-Lepage ceases to be
+himself the moment that he ventures to attempt
+the supernatural or even allegory pure and simple.
+He feels that he is no longer on familiar ground,
+he hesitates, he fumbles, and the harmony of the
+work suffers in consequence. Nevertheless, in spite
+of this undeniable defect, the face of Jeanne d'Arc
+will be remembered as a piece of powerful painting
+and genuine inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>At all events, Bastien-Lepage was keenly aware
+of the half-way nature of his success, and from
+that day renounced forever the element of the
+marvellous and confined himself to that concrete
+and tangible poetry which emanates from the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Some little time after his <i>Jeanne d'Arc</i>, he
+produced <i>The Mendicant</i>, veteran knight of the
+road, whose lazy life is passed in going from door
+to door, asking charity and compelling it if need
+be; suspicious looking old tramp, perhaps a thief
+as well, who inspires fear and whose sack is often
+filled through unwillingness to provoke him. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+artist has pictured him with a stout stick in his
+hand, stowing away the slice of bread which a
+pretty slip of a girl in a blue apron has just
+given him. This fine and vigorous canvas scored
+almost as much of a success, at the Salon of 1881,
+as the admirable <i>Portrait of Albert Wolff</i>, a critic
+on the <i>Figaro</i> and close personal friend of the
+artist.</p>
+
+<p>In 1882 he won a further success with his
+superb <i>Father Jacques</i>, a masterly study of the
+Lorraine peasant, and with his charming <i>Portrait
+of Mme. W.</i></p>
+
+<p>In 1883 came <i>Love in a Village</i>, one of his
+most popular canvases, in which he depicted with
+charming naturalness the uncomplicated and na&iuml;ve
+courtship of rustic lovers. Here are a pair who
+are untroubled by curious glances; the nearer
+houses of the village are quite close by. Bending
+slightly towards his sweetheart, the man is murmuring
+his avowals in her ear, in a voice that, we
+suspect, is by no means steady. Strapping fellow
+that he is, he evidently lacks the habit of
+making pretty speeches; we can see that from
+the embarrassed air with which he twists his
+fingers. His words, however, are plainly not lacking
+in eloquence, for the girl, type of buxom
+young womanhood that we have already learned
+to know, has bent her head and, although her
+back is turned, we are sure that she is blushing
+as she listens to his declaration. A special atmosphere
+emanates from this picture, as well as that
+profound spirit of poetry which is inseparable
+from the eternal song of love.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+<h2 class="p2"><a name="HIS_PREMATURE_END" id="HIS_PREMATURE_END"></a>HIS PREMATURE END</h2>
+
+<p>At this period Bastien-Lepage had already
+begun to incur the first attacks of the disease
+which was destined so soon to end his days. He
+suffered violent pains in the kidneys. He became
+melancholy, nervous, irritable; he shut himself up
+in his studio in the Rue Legendre, and even his
+best friends could not gain admittance. The doc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>tors
+who were called in recognized the gravity of
+his illness and ordered energetic treatment and
+a change of air. The poor artist reconciled himself
+to go for a time to Brittany, and his choice
+fell on Concarneau. The keen sea air produced
+a temporary betterment, and he took advantage
+of it to work, for he could not resign himself to
+lay aside his palette and brushes. He spent entire
+days in a boat and, in spite of his sufferings,
+executed several landscapes of rare beauty. But
+his condition, instead of improving, took a turn
+for the worse. "The digestive tube," he wrote
+to Theuriet, "is always kicking up a row!" The
+pain in the kidneys and bowels became at this
+time so violent that he was forced to decide to
+return to Paris, in order to consult the men of
+science once again.</p>
+
+<p>This time, when Dr. Potain examined him, he
+could no longer deceive himself as to the artist's
+fate; he saw that his patient was irremediably
+condemned. However, a sojourn in a milder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+climate might prolong his life for a few months;
+so he advised Algeria. The prospect of the journey,
+the desire to make the acquaintance of this land
+of sunshine which Delacroix, Decamps, and Fromentin
+had taught him to love, for a few days
+gave a false strength to the poor sufferer, which
+produced a deceptive appearance of renewed health
+and even deceived the artist himself. Besides, Mme.
+Bastien-Lepage, the "good little mother," was to
+accompany him, and this unselfish and tender devotion
+warmed his heart. The poor woman forced
+back her tears in order to smile upon the unfortunate
+son whom she knew to be doomed. And so
+the pitiful pair set forth for the land of sunshine,
+she consumed with grief, and he almost joyous in
+the hope of a speedy cure.</p>
+
+<p>His first letters to his friends bore the imprint
+of good spirits; Algeria aroused his enthusiasm
+by its clear and vibrant colours; his disease declared
+a brief truce and he began to form projects.
+The thought of dying had not yet even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+vaguely occurred to him, though, for that matter,
+he had no fear of death. The previous year he
+had painted <i>Gambetta on his Death-bed</i>; and
+his frequent visits to Ville-d'Avray led him to
+discuss the inevitable end of life. "I am not
+afraid of death," he said, "dying is nothing,&mdash;the
+important thing is to survive oneself,
+and who can be sure of establishing a claim
+upon posterity? But there! I am talking nonsense!
+So long as our work is true, nothing else
+matters."</p>
+
+<p>But before long the ravages of the disease began
+to make headway; the kidneys no longer
+performed their function, and he suffered atrocious
+agonies which stretched him for days at a time
+on his back. Even the burning heat of the African
+sun no longer had strength enough to animate his
+shattered physique; the brush, which the artist
+from time to time still attempted to take up,
+fell from between his fingers. He, Bastien-Lepage,
+painter of the soil, found himself unable to transfer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+to canvas the enchantment of that land of fairy
+tale! And he poured forth his distress in long
+and poignant letters, in which could be read in
+every line the loss of hope and the sure prevision
+of the now inevitable end.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 320px;"><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>
+<a href="images/illus83.jpg"><img class="p2" src="images/illus83_thumb.jpg" width="320" height="388" alt="PLATE VIII" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><a href="images/illus83.jpg">PLATE VIII.&mdash;THE ARTIST&#39;S UNCLE</a></span></div>
+
+<p class="center"><small>(Museum at Verdun)</small></p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Here is still another kindly and vigorous face from Lorraine,
+forcefully modelled, with salient jaw bones, betraying the obstinacy
+of the race. An air of good nature softens the energy of this face,
+and the eyes sparkle with intelligence. This portrait is treated in a
+free-handed manner, with unfaltering strokes, and its colouring is
+especially excellent.</p>
+
+<p class="p4">As no amelioration took place, Bastien-Lepage
+made the return journey to Paris towards the end
+of May, 1884. He went back to his studio in
+the Rue Legendre, where he had formerly passed
+such happy hours in the full enjoyment of a
+talent at its zenith and a constitution apparently
+able to defy all tests. Now, however, he dragged
+around a dying body, with disease gnawing at his
+vitals. He could no longer sleep without the aid
+of powerful doses of morphine. The winter-time
+increased his suffering; his strength rapidly failed
+him; and, on the tenth of December, at six o'clock
+in the evening, he drew his last breath, at the
+age of thirty-six years.</p>
+
+<p>As long as he could hold a brush, Bastien-Lepage
+continued to work, in spite of the sufferings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+which racked him. During the year preceding his
+death, while he was already experiencing frightful
+tortures, he painted <i>The Woman making Lye</i>
+and <i>The Little Chimney-sweep</i>, the latter of
+which is here reproduced. This admirable canvas
+is to be seen now at the studio of the painter's
+brother at Neuilly, and forms part of the legacy
+which M. &Eacute;mile Bastien-Lepage intends to bequeath
+to the Louvre. It has never been shown at
+any Salon, and for that matter there are a good
+many other paintings and portraits which have
+never been exhibited in public and which are not
+for that reason any the less remarkable. We may
+cite at random: <i>The Portrait of M. &Eacute;. Bastien-Lepage</i>,
+<i>The Prince of Wales</i>, <i>Mme. Juliette
+Drouet</i>, <i>A Little Girl going to School</i>, <i>The Little
+Pedler asleep</i>, <i>The Vintage</i>, <i>No Help! The Thames
+at London, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>The very year of his death, shortly before his
+departure for Algeria, Bastien-Lepage executed a
+delicious little canvas entitled <i>The Forge</i>, in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+the artist expended a surprising amount of talent
+and skill, and which enables us to realize what
+extraordinary heights his ever progressive genius
+might have attained, but for the blind and brutal
+cruelty of Destiny.</p>
+
+<p>His death was a time of mourning for the
+arts; the regrets which he left behind him were
+unanimous. Even those who had been opposed
+to his aesthetic creed paid homage to his great
+conscientiousness as an artist and his noble character
+as a man.</p>
+
+<p>During March and April, 1885, only a few
+months after his death, all literary and artistic
+Paris flocked to the Hotel de Chimay, an adjunct
+to the &Eacute;cole des Beaux-Arts, where a posthumous
+exhibition of his works had been organized.</p>
+
+<p>At this exhibition the entire body of his works
+had been brought together. The museums had
+loaned the canvases which they possessed and
+the private collectors had done their share towards
+the glorification of the artist by entrusting to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+organizers a goodly number of paintings and portraits
+which had never figured in any of the
+Salons.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was made possible to comprehend at
+a single glance the life-work of this remarkable
+artist and to appreciate the distance he had traversed,
+the progress he had made during his brief
+existence, and the brilliant prospects that were
+destroyed by his untimely death.</p>
+
+<p>From all these numerous works, exhibited side
+by side, what stood out most clearly was the unity
+of thought which had conceived them and the
+dogged fidelity to principles which had controlled
+their execution. At the same time they revealed
+the amazing adaptability of his talent, which
+essayed the most diverse and conflicting subjects
+with the same realistic vigour, bestowing even
+upon his vaporous and delicate portraits of women
+a touch which, while light, is unmistakably his
+own, and in which we recognize that noble, conscientious
+workmanship, free from all artifice, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+was the distinctive hall-mark both of his painting
+and of his character.</p>
+
+<p>But the quality which dominates all the rest
+in the work of Bastien-Lepage, and which emanates
+from it like the fragrance which is exhaled by
+certain precious essences, is his ardent and deep-rooted
+love for his native soil. This form of local
+patriotism, determined by the boundaries of Lorraine,
+underwent a noble expansion to the point
+of encircling the entire earth; for while the painter
+chose his models out of the familiar landscape of
+his childhood's home, his observation and his art
+broke out of the bounds of this special setting
+and embraced rustic humanity throughout France
+and even beyond. His peasants are unmistakably
+from the banks of the Meuse in type and in customs,
+but they are from the world at large in
+gesture and in philosophy of life. Whether he
+comes from the North or from the South, the
+tiller of the soil wages the same conflict with
+ungrateful furrows, the spade and the plough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+imprint the same calluses on his bony hands,
+the sun browns his energetic and stubborn features
+to the same deep tan. It is in this respect that
+the art of Bastien-Lepage assumes a higher significance;
+like Millet, it is not a peasant whom he
+paints, but the peasant, forever unchanging in
+spite of latitude. But if his work has attained
+this higher eminence of generalization, it is precisely
+for the reason that the artist's watchful
+eye has succeeded in discovering, in the life of
+the peasantry, that state of mind which is common
+to them all, that immutable gesture which
+they have always made and always will make.
+He has understood and translated with inspired
+eloquence their rugged strength, their na&iuml;ve awkwardness,
+their simple intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Another glorious distinction of Bastien-Lepage
+was that he loved the fields as well as he loved the
+peasants. Not fields drowned beneath melancholy
+shadow and pallid shifting light, but fields bathed
+in sunshine, until the golden tassels of the grain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+crackle like sparks under the fire of the midday
+sun. Always and everywhere he sought for light,
+and in the midst of it his modest protagonists of
+rustic life stand out in all their vigour.</p>
+
+<p>It would be easy to cite, among our best contemporary
+painters, a considerable number of artists
+who are brilliantly continuing the tradition left
+by Bastien-Lepage and emulating his predilection
+for the luminous brilliance of the open air. How
+often, in the presence of a canvas by Lhermitte,
+our thoughts go back to the painter of Lorraine,
+whose vigorous execution and joyous colouring
+seem to have been reincarnated! Art is indebted
+to Bastien-Lepage for having reinstated nature
+in all her literal truth by proving that, in order
+to be beautiful, she has no need of artificial and
+superfluous adornment.</p>
+
+<p>Lorraine, out of gratitude, wished to perpetuate
+the memory of this glorious son of the Meuse,
+who had so eloquently celebrated the vitality and
+poetry of his natal earth. It was at Damvillers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+itself that it was decided to raise a monument to
+the great painter; and around its pedestal there
+were gathered the "good little mother," all in
+tears, the assembled population of the village
+and the whole region round about, and even the
+Government took part in the pious ceremony
+by sending as its representative M. Gustave
+Larroumet, director of the Beaux-Arts. This
+eloquent art critic brought as a tribute to the
+departed painter the official seal of immortality,
+and he pronounced it in terms vibrant with
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"At the moment," he said, "when ordinarily
+the best of artists have done no more than to
+give indications of their originality and when
+ripening years alone begin to keep the promises
+of youth, Jules Bastien-Lepage died, leaving masterpieces
+behind him, besides having liberated an
+artistic formula from the tendencies and exaggerations
+which hampered it, and indicated to the art
+of painting a new pathway along which his young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+heirs are advancing with an assured step. He
+loved nature and truth; he loved his own people,
+and no one ever lived who was surrounded with
+a greater degree of affection; he inspired faithful
+friendships which he himself enjoyed to the full;
+and those whom he left behind soothe their heart-ache
+with the balm of tender memories; he practised
+his art without ever making sacrifice to
+passing fashion or sordid profit; there was no
+place in his mind or in his heart for any other
+than noble and generous thoughts. Let us comfort
+ourselves, therefore, for what his death has
+taken from us by the thought of what his life has
+left to us, and let us assign him his place in the
+ranks of the younger master painters who have
+been mown down in full flower, close beside that
+of G&eacute;ricault and of Henri Regnault."</p>
+
+<p>In his admirable biographic and critical study
+of Bastien-Lepage, whose personal friend he had
+been, M. L. de Fourcaud, by way of conclusion,
+bids him this touching farewell:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Poor Bastien-Lepage, snatched away one winter's
+night, at thirty-six years of age, in the fairest
+flowering of his bright promise, in the richest
+expansion of his personality; may each returning
+month of May bring at least an abundance of
+blossoms to the apple tree beside his grave! For
+the blossoms of the apple were always, in his eyes,
+so fair a sight!"</p>
+
+<p>To-day he sleeps forever in a corner of that
+Lorraine land which he loved so dearly, and perhaps
+in the cemetery of his native village his
+shade can still hear the familiar accents of his
+native dialect. The great painter of Lorraine
+could never have slept his eternal sleep in any
+other soil than that.</p>
+
+<p>Painter of flowers, painter of nature, painter
+of the earth which is forever deathless and forever
+renewed, Bastien-Lepage has chosen that better part;
+his work will live as long as these, his models, and
+will go down through the centuries in all the
+splendour of increasing beauty and eternal youth.</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="p2 header">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p>Typographical errors have been corrected as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>Page 22: "Bastine" replaced with "Bastien"</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bastien Lepage, by Fr. Crastre
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BASTIEN LEPAGE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 36533-h.htm or 36533-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/5/3/36533/
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Hunter Monroe and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/36533-h/images/cover.jpg b/36533-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa39293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus04.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus04.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61867a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus04.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus04_thumb.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus04_thumb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..066b69d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus04_thumb.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus05.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus05.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c72752c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus05.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus11.png b/36533-h/images/illus11.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9acf3ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus11.png
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus15.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus15.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19688e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus15.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus15_thumb.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus15_thumb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c7656d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus15_thumb.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus27.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus27.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cce655
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus27.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus27_thumb.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus27_thumb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..391b45d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus27_thumb.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus31.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus31.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..29b4c75
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus31.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus31_thumb.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus31_thumb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..035c37e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus31_thumb.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus47.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus47.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea21ac0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus47.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus47_thumb.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus47_thumb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..335495f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus47_thumb.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus59.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus59.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..49ae83c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus59.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus59_thumb.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus59_thumb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb348d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus59_thumb.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus71.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus71.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b006a79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus71.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus71_thumb.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus71_thumb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a6aff5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus71_thumb.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus83.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus83.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7c469b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus83.jpg
diff --git a/36533-h/images/illus83_thumb.jpg b/36533-h/images/illus83_thumb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0cf35d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533-h/images/illus83_thumb.jpg
diff --git a/36533.txt b/36533.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ecd1514
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1526 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bastien Lepage, by Fr. Crastre
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bastien Lepage
+
+Author: Fr. Crastre
+
+Translator: Frederic Taber Cooper
+
+Release Date: June 26, 2011 [EBook #36533]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BASTIEN LEPAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Hunter Monroe and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    MASTERPIECES
+    IN COLOUR
+
+    EDITED BY
+    M. HENRY ROUJON
+
+
+    BASTIEN-LEPAGE
+    (1848-1884)
+
+
+
+
+    IN THE SAME SERIES
+
+ REYNOLDS           CHARDIN
+ VELASQUEZ          MILLET
+ GREUZE             RAEBURN
+ TURNER             SARGENT
+ BOTTICELLI         CONSTABLE
+ ROMNEY             MEMLING
+ REMBRANDT          FRAGONARD
+ BELLINI            DUeRER
+ FRA ANGELICO       LAWRENCE
+ ROSSETTI           HOGARTH
+ RAPHAEL            WATTEAU
+ LEIGHTON           MURILLO
+ HOLMAN HUNT        WATTS
+ TITIAN             INGRES
+ MILLAIS            COROT
+ LUINI              DELACROIX
+ FRANZ HALS         FRA LIPPO LIPPI
+ CARLO DOLCI        PUVIS DE CHAVANNES
+ GAINSBOROUGH       MEISSONIER
+ TINTORETTO         GEROME
+ VAN DYCK           VERONESE
+ DA VINCI           VAN EYCK
+ WHISTLER           FROMENTIN
+ RUBENS             MANTEGNA
+ BOUCHER            PERUGINO
+ HOLBEIN            ROSA BONHEUR
+ BURNE-JONES        BASTIEN-LEPAGE
+ LE BRUN            GOYA
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE I.--THE SONG OF SPRINGTIME
+
+  (Museum at Verdun)
+
+  This is one of the artist's earliest works. A certain embarrassment may
+  be noted in the manner in which the Cupids are treated; even at this
+  period, it is easy to see that allegory is not suited to the precise and
+  realistic talent of this painter; yet the young girl is designed with a
+  vigour which already foreshadows the masterly art of _Hay-making_.]
+
+
+
+
+    Bastien Lepage
+
+    BY FR. CRASTRE
+
+    TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
+    BY FREDERIC TABER COOPER
+
+    ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
+    REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
+
+    [Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM.]
+
+    FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+    NEW YORK--PUBLISHERS
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
+    FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+    [Illustration: March, 1914]
+
+    THE.PLIMPTON.PRESS
+    NORWOOD.MASS.U.S.A
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+                                                                   Page
+
+ His Youth                                                          16
+
+ His Best Years                                                     31
+
+ His Premature End                                                  65
+
+
+
+
+ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ Plate
+
+    I.   The Song of Springtime                             Frontispiece
+         Museum at Verdun
+
+   II.   Portrait of M. Wallon                                      14
+         Museum of the Louvre
+
+  III.   The Artist's Mother                                        24
+         Collection of E. Bastien-Lepage
+
+   IV.   The Hay-making                                             34
+         Museum of the Luxembourg
+
+    V.   Portrait of M. Hayem                                       40
+         Museum of the Luxembourg
+
+   VI.   Portrait of M. X----                                       50
+         Museum at Verdun
+
+  VII.   The Little Boatman                                         60
+         Collection of E. Bastien-Lepage
+
+ VIII.   The Artist's Uncle                                         70
+         Museum at Verdun
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+There are certain beings who bear the stamp of the divine seal and are
+preordained to receive the highest favours within the gift of glory;
+they are fated to pass through life like those brilliant meteors which
+are seen to flash across the heavens and disappear in the same instant.
+Bastien-Lepage was one of these meteors. But while the others leave
+behind them only a luminous trail that swiftly vanishes, this rare
+artist, snatched so prematurely from the field of art, traced his
+passage in a furrow of dazzling splendour, the radiance of which has not
+even yet begun to fade.
+
+Bastien-Lepage was a painter in the noblest acceptation of the term; it
+may even be asserted that he would have exercised considerable influence
+upon the art of his epoch if Destiny had not stupidly mown down the
+sturdy flower of his genius in the very hour of its brightest
+blossoming. Born into this world with a solid tenacity of purpose which
+seems to be a special gift of the soil of Lorraine to her sons and
+daughters, he had a clear-cut and unalterable conception of what
+painting should be. His mind was receptive only of simple ideas, his eye
+perceived only visions that were tangible, such as were unobscured by
+any shadow or any artifice. He was the apostle of clearness, both in
+conception and in execution. Every time that he tried experimentally to
+turn aside from his chosen path, he ceased to be himself, he fell
+below his own standards. What interested him most of all, in the life of
+this world which he observed so eagerly, as though he had a presentiment
+of his early end, was nature's most precise and most uncompromising
+manifestation, both in line and in relief; namely, the peasant and the
+environment which frames him. Having deliberately chosen such models,
+Bastien-Lepage could not pretend to be the painter of the Beautiful, nor
+did he ever become so. He did not even adorn his subjects with that
+special sort of idealism with which Millet embellished even his most
+uncouth rustic types, a slightly melancholy idealism obtained by a
+sombre toning down of colour, which Bastien-Lepage held in horror. His
+peasants stand out boldly, in the crude glare of flamboyant noontide,
+under a summer sun that refuses to leave hidden any part of their
+ugliness or their defects. He painted them as he saw them, with the
+searching rays striking them full in the face; and his brush was a
+stranger to any compromise, intolerant of even the slightest
+betterment, in the course of the literal transference of his model to
+his canvas. It made no difference how handsome or how homely a given
+subject might be, Bastien-Lepage would always render him precisely as
+nature, in a grudging or indulgent mood, had made him,--that is to say,
+truly and sincerely, with a precision that would be almost photographic,
+if the minuteness of his technique were not ennobled by the high quality
+of his art. With such gifts, Bastien-Lepage was foreordained to be a
+marvellous interpreter of rural life, and such he was in the highest
+degree; in like manner, he could not fail to become a portrait painter
+of the first order, and it was in this capacity also that he enrolled
+himself among the most interesting and vigorous artists of our epoch.
+
+  [Illustration:
+
+  PLATE II.--PORTRAIT OF M. WALLON
+
+  (Museum of the Louvre)
+
+  Few artists have been able to endow their models with such an animated
+  expression of life. All the keenness, intelligence and austerity of this
+  prominent personage, known by the name of Father of the Constitution,
+  are eloquently transferred to this page, with a sobriety of means that
+  still further emphasizes its vigour.]
+
+
+
+
+    HIS YOUTH
+
+
+Jules Bastien-Lepage was born at Damvillers, in the department of the
+Meuse, on the first of November, 1848. His parents were of the
+well-to-do farming class, occupied from one year's end to the other with
+the work of the fields. Consequently, all the early boyhood of the
+artist was passed in daily contact with the soil of Lorraine and with
+the sons of that soil. He knew them, one and all, in his native village;
+he grew up among them; he went to school side by side with the other
+little rustics of his own age: he understood the peasant class, with all
+their faults, their virtues, their habits of life; he learned to read in
+their faces, which were a sealed book to the outsider, the opinions and
+emotions which they had in common with him.
+
+These childhood impressions were destined to abide with him throughout
+his life; he cherished to the end a fervent love for his native land,
+and he felt that he had an infinitely noble task in painting that life
+of the fields which the Second Empire affected to despise.
+
+But though he came of peasant stock, it was Bastien-Lepage's good
+fortune that these same peasants were in prosperous circumstances and
+could afford to give him an education. They were ambitious for him; and
+it hurt them to see their little Jules, who was so wide-awake, so
+intelligent, and at the same time so frail, leading the hard and
+monotonous life of the fields, following the plough, tilling the soil.
+It needed only a few household economies to enable him to continue his
+studies; so, when the time came, young Bastien-Lepage wended his way
+towards Verdun, where he entered upon his college course.
+
+There is nothing that marks in any particular way these years of study,
+nothing to indicate that the boy was a youthful prodigy, nor that he
+showed any special aptitude for drawing. But he was studious, diligent,
+and anxious to avoid repremands and to fulfil the expectations of his
+parents. In due time he obtained his bachelor's degree, which at that
+period was highly prized. His father, filled with pride, already began
+to form brilliant projects for his future, already foresaw him a
+distinguished official, supervising some great branch of the public
+service. As a matter of fact, a position was found for the young
+baccalaureate in a government department which was neither the most
+desirable nor the one of least importance; namely, the Post Office
+Department. Bastien-Lepage was not vastly delighted with the choice,
+but, dutiful son that he was, he accepted the modest clerkship offered
+him. One circumstance contributed, in a large degree, towards overcoming
+his reluctance: the post assigned to him from the start was in Paris, of
+which he had often heard marvellous things, and in which he hoped that
+he would be able to follow his secret inclination. For, in the interval
+his vocation had revealed itself; he had conceived a passion for
+drawing, for colouring, for painting; and, like Correggio, he was eager
+to say in his turn, "I too am a painter!"
+
+Accordingly he set forth, leaving behind him no suspicion of his
+purpose. Upon arriving at the capital, he acquitted himself scrupulously
+of his official duties, but every leisure moment was consecrated to
+visiting the museums and exhibitions. He saturated himself with the
+wealth of beauty strewn broadcast through the Louvre, and was thrilled
+with admiration at contact with the masters of every school and country.
+He did not care equally for them all, in spite of their genius; his
+intimate preferences leaned to the side of Flemish rather than Italian
+art; but he was not insensible to the lofty inspiration, the severe
+harmony, the faultless composition, which have made the great masters of
+the Renaissance the most astonishing prodigies in the history of
+painting.
+
+But while the older schools of art delighted him, he followed with no
+less attention the movement of contemporary painting. At the hour when
+his critical spirit awoke, certain new elements and new formulas had
+come to light and had been put into practice by two audacious and gifted
+artists by the names of Courbet and Manet. Although the prolonged
+struggle between the classicists and romanticists had not yet come to an
+end, these two rival schools were entrenched in their positions and
+refused to stir forth from them. Supporters of Delacroix and of Ingres
+confined themselves strictly to their respective hostile formulas, doing
+nothing either to expand or to rejuvenate them. Whoever dared to venture
+outside of one of these two beaten tracks was regarded as a madman, and
+his attempts were greeted with derisive clamours by both parties, who
+declared a momentary truce, for the purpose of annihilating him by a
+joint attack. Courbet, who was scorned by Ingres, met with equally harsh
+criticism from Delacroix; and as for Manet, he had managed to call down
+universal wrath upon his head, and at the Salon of 1863 it became
+necessary to place his _Olympia_ in the very topmost line upon the wall,
+in order to protect it from the fury of the public, hounded on by the
+hue and cry of the critics.
+
+Bastien-Lepage made mental notes of all the episodes of this struggle;
+he listened to the criticisms and passed them through the crucible of
+his unspoiled mind, in the presence of the very works under indictment.
+His good sense showed him how large an element of injustice entered into
+these hostilities. Moreover, his peasant blood inclined him to
+sympathize with those artists who refused to bind themselves to seek for
+beauty only within the limits of academic form, and who had the ability
+to make it flash forth from the humblest and even the most vulgar type
+of subject. Furthermore, this constant study of matters pertaining to
+art, day by day added fuel to the hidden fire smouldering within him; he
+was conscious of its mounting flame. Back of the rude sketches, drawn
+and coloured in the tiny chamber befitting an humble postal clerk, he
+perceived vaguely that he also possessed the temperament of a painter,
+and little by little he witnessed the unfolding of his artist's soul.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE III.--THE ARTIST'S MOTHER
+
+  (Collection of E. Bastien-Lepage)
+
+  What a kindly and gentle face this is, the face of the woman to whom the
+  artist applied the tender endearment of "Good little mother!" In this
+  work, it is evident that the heart guided the hand of the painter. None
+  but a son could have rendered with such emotion the humid tenderness of
+  those eyes and the maternal caress of those lips. It is a powerful work,
+  which enrolls Bastien-Lepage in the foremost rank of portrait
+  painters.]
+
+At last, unable to bear it longer, he resigned from the postal service
+and enrolled his name at the Beaux-Arts. At this time, when he entered
+the studio of Cabanel, he was but little more than nineteen years of
+age. Cabanel, to be sure, was not the painter of his choice, but
+Bastien-Lepage was not for that reason any the less appreciative of a
+system of instruction which was dominated by a worship of line-work. His
+training under Cabanel was not without value to the young artist, who
+throughout his life, even in his most realistic paintings, proved
+himself to be an impeccable master of design.
+
+At the outset, however, he was beset with difficulties. Now that his
+salary as a postal clerk had ceased and remittances from the family were
+necessarily restricted, Bastien-Lepage exerted himself to gain a living
+by his own efforts. He had no lack of courage, and he had in addition
+that Lorraine tenacity which enabled him to confront all difficulties
+with tranquil assurance. He worked with desperate energy, and in the
+intervals of respite from his labours he overran all Paris in search of
+orders from business houses. It was an inglorious task, but at least it
+enabled him to live; thus it happened that about 1873 he produced a
+widely circulated advertisement for a perfumery house. Up to this time
+he had remained wholly unknown; and although he had already exhibited
+one painting, at the Salon of 1870, it was passed by unheeded both by
+the critics and the general public.
+
+This lack of success in no wise discouraged him, for he had faith. It
+was in the year 1874 that he exhibited _The Song of Springtime_. It was
+a veritable revelation. There was no neglect this time. The public
+gathered in throngs before his canvas, and the critics, notwithstanding
+a few objections to details, were lavish in their praise and hailed him
+as having the qualities of a true artist. Naturally, the picture was not
+perfect, but it well merited the flattering reception which it received.
+In a springtime landscape a young peasant girl is seated beneath a
+tree, looking before her over a sunlit plain. Around her skirts a whole
+bevy of Cupids are gathering blossoms and offering them to the girl.
+Here, at the first stroke, is an assertion of the young painter's
+independence, his formal determination to emancipate himself from the
+accepted formulas in his treatment of the eternal theme of a young
+girl's soul, opening to the first appeal of love. As a matter of fact,
+the allegory is somewhat clumsy; you realize that the author's talent
+does not run to sentimental compositions. Yet the young girl is brushed
+in with an energetic hand, and all that rather coarse robustness that
+distinguishes the women of peasant stock is blended in a masterly manner
+with the naive innocence of simple souls. _The Song of Springtime_ was
+Bastien-Lepage's first attempt in that vein of realistic painting in
+which he was soon destined to excel.
+
+That same year he produced _Grandfather's Portrait_, which also
+attracted much attention. The artist had placed his model in the little
+garden adjoining the home of his birth. This portrait, which belongs
+to-day to the painter's brother, is remarkable for its naturalness, its
+touch of intimate understanding, and its vigour of execution.
+
+Bastien-Lepage had now acquired a name. His _Song of Springtime_ won him
+a third class medal, and the State purchased the painting for the museum
+at Verdun, where it at present hangs.
+
+In the following year he exhibited _Her First Communion_, picturing a
+young and pretty country girl, stiff and self-conscious under her white
+veil. This work was the product of keen observation, and is deliberately
+stilted and traditional in its style of execution, recalling in some
+measure the French primitive school. Bastien-Lepage evidently had in
+mind the portraits by Francois Cluet: his little communicant is
+infinitely artificial in her spotless finery, yet infinitely alive under
+the thin surface wash of colour which recalls the _Elizabeth of
+Austria_, wife of Charles IX, as painted by the greatest of the French
+primitives.
+
+Simultaneously with this picture he exhibited the _Portrait of M.
+Hayem_, in which the vigorous treatment of the face, with its clear,
+firm colour tones and sober workmanship, proclaimed him already a
+portrait painter of the first order.
+
+His success this time was more marked: he received a medal of the second
+class. A less modest artist would have allowed himself to be borne
+tranquilly along by the mounting tide of glory; but Bastien-Lepage did
+not yet feel that he was sufficiently sure of himself. He wished to
+continue for a while longer, working, learning, perfecting himself; he
+even conceived the idea, in spite of his renown, of competing for the
+_Prix de Rome_. Accordingly, the painter of _The Song of Springtime_ and
+_Her First Communion_ might shortly after have been seen entering the
+lists like any ordinary nobody. He obtained only the second prize.
+
+He presented himself again the following year, but with no better
+success. The subject assigned for the competition was _Priam at the Feet
+of Achilles_. It is easy to understand that such a theme was little
+calculated to inspire an artist of Bastien-Lepage's temperament; he
+found it impossible to attain full development unless in the presence of
+nature herself. No amount of manual dexterity can take the place of
+inborn faith, and the young artist had no faith in antiquity; he never
+could muster any enthusiasm for the Greek or Roman gods, nor for
+historic scenes in which the very attitudes are dictated by the rules
+and regulations of time-honoured tradition.
+
+Nevertheless, the work is not without merit; it is forceful, its
+colouring is good, and it falls short of perfection only in failing to
+conform sufficiently with what we know of ancient life. This painting is
+at present to be found in the Museum at Lille.
+
+This rebuff did not discourage Bastien-Lepage unreasonably; but he
+decided to confine himself in the future to painting portraits and
+picturing the life of the fields.
+
+
+
+
+    HIS BEST YEARS
+
+
+The same year that he failed for the second time in the competition for
+the _Prix de Rome_, Bastien-Lepage painted _The Portrait of M. Wallon_,
+which is one of his most important works as a portrait painter. In spite
+of its tendency towards naturalism, this canvas was nevertheless still
+conceived in accordance with the established technique, and the keen and
+serious visage of the Father of the Constitution standing out against
+its sombre background is a fine study in chiaroscuro.
+
+But the following year he struck the naturalistic note more strongly in
+his _Portrait of Lady L._, the only full-length, life-sized portrait
+that he ever painted; and he declared himself plainly and definitely a
+realist in his picture entitled _My Parents_. It would be impossible to
+find two figures more life-like, more literal, or painted with greater
+sincerity. This canvas amounted to a declaration of principles; for an
+artist whom filial piety cannot turn aside from the truth will never
+make sacrifices to convention: he will never consent to embellish or
+idealize his models through tricks of his craft; he will paint them as
+he sees them, without correcting any of the imperfections and ugliness
+with which nature has afflicted them. How clearly we recognize that
+these likenesses of Bastien-Lepage's parents are absolutely true to
+life, and how much better we like them as they are, in the simple
+intimacy of daily life, than if they had been decked out, all spick and
+span, as a less scrupulous artist would inevitably have shown them to
+us!
+
+Bastien-Lepage's brother, himself a painter of some talent, has
+preserved in his studio at Neuilly a certain number of the artist's
+works, which he surrounds with pious care and feelingly exhibits to
+occasional visitors. The family portraits are there, pulsating with life
+and radiating that generous peasant kindliness which finds
+expression in a broad and tender smile. The father, seated in a chair in
+his garden, an old man with shrewd yet friendly eyes, seems so real, so
+actual, that we almost expect him to step down from his frame to bid us
+welcome. And what a marvel the _Portrait of my Mother_ is, which forms a
+companion piece on the same wall! A somewhat wistful charm pervades this
+face, with its deeply graven lines, and an infinite tenderness, a true
+mother's tenderness, hovers over the thin, pale lips.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE IV--HAY-MAKING
+
+  (Museum of the Luxembourg)
+
+  A masterpiece of contemporary painting, because of the truth of its
+  attitudes and the vigour of its execution. It would be impossible to
+  render more forcibly the blissfulness of rest when the body has been
+  racked by the exhausting labour of the soil. In this picture,
+  Bastien-Lepage revealed himself as an incomparable painter of rural
+  life.]
+
+Perhaps this is the moment, in the presence of these pictures, to
+emphasize Bastien-Lepage's great value as a colourist. Few contemporary
+painters have used colour with so much tact, such veritable mastery as
+he. Others have employed more dazzling tonal schemes and have achieved
+more gorgeous effects, but no one has rendered with such exact truth the
+tints of the flesh, the grayish folds of wrinkles, the profound light of
+the eye. And his colour is always clear, always unmistakably employed
+to produce a sought-after effect. There is no artifice, no trick-work,
+it is all straightforward, honest, precise; the opposition of light and
+shade never result in opacity, bitumen plays no part in his canvases,
+the astonishing relief of which is obtained by means of such perfect
+simplicity that it recalls the inimitable technique of Correggio.
+
+In 1878 he exhibited _Hay-making_, that magisterial page from the life
+of the fields which to-day is the pride of the Luxembourg museum, and
+which the art of the engraver has scattered broadcast to the extent of
+millions of copies.
+
+This picture represents a vast sun-bathed meadow, overstrewn with
+new-mown hay and punctuated, here and there, by the rounded cones of the
+stacks. Against the blue background of the sky, green hill-tops trace an
+undulant line. In the foreground a robust, bony-armed country-woman is
+seated on the grass, her legs stretched out before her in an attitude
+expressive of the utter weariness resulting from the work performed.
+Her head, solidly planted on her massive neck, is a marvel of realism;
+in her vulgar peasant face we may read health, strength, and a sort of
+dulled mentality born of physical fatigue. In every fibre of her
+exhausted body the woman is veritably resting, and through her
+half-parted lips it seems as though we could detect the passage of her
+hurried breathing. The man beside her, no less worn out than she, is
+stretched at full length on the thick couch of grass, and with his hat
+over his face, to shelter it from the sun, he is sleeping as though dead
+to the world.
+
+Every detail of this canvas is perfect, because every detail is true,
+drawn straight from life, the fruit of minute observation. In it
+Bastien-Lepage once more affirms his predilection for the open country;
+and nothing could be more impressive than these two uncouth, vulgar,
+homely human beings, set amid the splendour of a meadow turned golden by
+the sun. It is an every-day spectacle; it would not seem at first sight
+to contain material for a picture. But Bastien-Lepage has succeeded in
+proving indisputably that beauty does not consist solely in the harmony
+of the body, but in the impression which emanates from scenes that are
+most humble in outward appearance. In these few square feet of canvas
+the artist has summed up, perhaps without intending it, all the majesty
+of nature and all the grandeur of the life of the fields. It is scarcely
+necessary to add that this work is a transcript of the soil of Lorraine,
+that good natal soil which he loved so profoundly and to which he
+returned eagerly, year after year.
+
+Bastien-Lepage was exclusively the painter of the rural aspects of
+Lorraine; he loved its horizons, its fertile and undulating plains. And
+when, occasionally, he ventured into allegory, the background was still
+Lorraine, and the characters were developed in the familiar setting of
+his native village, Damvillers. And how he loved it! How he enjoyed the
+warm atmosphere of affection which always awaited him when his
+father, grandfather, and valiant and devoted "little mother" gathered at
+night around the family table! He made his home in Paris, because
+residence there was indispensable, both for business and artistic
+reasons; but the moment that he could escape from the capital and its
+constraints, he would go to rest and gather new energy in the midst of
+the family circle. He had a spacious studio installed in the second
+story of the ancestral home; and there he worked, absolutely happy so
+long as he could see the old grandfather at his side, pipe in mouth,
+examining the work with a knowing air, and the father and mother in a
+sort of ecstasy, as they watched him fill in his canvas.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE V.--PORTRAIT OF M. HAYEM
+
+  (Museum of the Luxembourg)
+
+  A marvel of discernment and of rendering. The face, to be sure, has a
+  strong originality; but there is no slight merit in having expressed
+  with such striking truth the piercing intelligence of the eyes that
+  twinkle behind the lenses of the spectacles, and the energy, tempered
+  with satiric humour, of his whole odd physiognomy.]
+
+Nevertheless, Bastien-Lepage was no studio painter; it was not from the
+height of a window that he chose to contemplate nature, but in the open
+fields, in the very heart of the furrows; and it was there also, in the
+midst of the wheat and the rye, that he set up his easel and painted
+his peasants in action, in the daily fulfilment of their thankless
+task. And by picturing them thus, without artifice, in all their
+simplicity of gesture and coarseness of feature, he imbued his canvases
+with a profound spirit of poetry, through which the often brutal realism
+of his subjects was redeemed and ennobled. In the presence of these
+peasants he experienced a joy more genuine than he had ever felt before
+the rarest canvases in any museum. Not that he denied or disdained the
+genius of the great ancestors of painting; he had too much reverence for
+his art ever to dream of doing so. But when it came to a question of
+training, he could learn more from nature than from them. Listen to his
+own exposition of his ideas:
+
+"What a pity," he wrote, "that we are initiated, whether we will or not,
+into traditions and routines, under the pretext that this is the way to
+train us to be artists! It would be so simple to teach the use of brush
+and palette, without ever once mentioning the name of Michelangelo or
+Raphael or Murillo or Domenichino! We could then go home, back to
+Brittany or Gascony, Lorraine or Normandy, and peacefully paint the
+portrait of our own province; and if some morning the book we had
+chanced to read aroused the wish to paint a Prodigal Son, or Priam at
+the feet of Achilles, we could reconstruct the scene to suit ourselves,
+without needing to resort to the museums, taking the setting from our
+own surroundings and making use of the models close at hand, as though
+the old drama dated only from yesterday. That is the way for an artist
+to succeed in breathing the breath of life into his art and in making it
+beautiful and appealing to the eyes of the whole world. And that is the
+goal towards which I am striving with all my strength."
+
+As painter of the open air, he became in a certain sense the founder of
+a school, without meaning to be; for his conception of the painter's art
+won over a whole group of young artists who united in hailing him as
+their master. Each year his offerings to the Salon were impatiently
+awaited, and his followers gathered in full force before them,
+discussing, comparing, acclaiming; each Salon became the occasion for a
+new success, the critics were unanimous in praising him, the public
+adopted his pictures for their own, because they could understand his
+clear and rigorous manner. Whatever hostility he met with was among his
+own colleagues, at least among such of them as were discouraged and
+humiliated by his vigorous originality. Nevertheless, the Exposition of
+1878, at which he had gathered together all his works, was an especially
+triumphant occasion for him; yet when the awards were distributed, he
+discovered that he had received nothing but a medal of the third class.
+
+At the Salon of 1879, Bastien-Lepage exhibited his _Women gathering
+Potatoes_, which formed a companion piece to his _Hay-making_. Here
+again we have the landscape of Lorraine and the eternal and infinitely
+varied theme of rural labour. In a sun-parched field two women are
+toiling to reap the harvest of potatoes. While the one in the middle
+distance is stooping to turn up the ripe bulbs from the soil, the other,
+placed in the foreground, is striving to empty the contents of her
+basket into a sack which she holds open by a wonderfully natural
+movement of her knee. Nothing could be simpler or more humble than this
+subject, and yet one feels drawn towards it, conquered by the truth of
+these two figures, both in their attitude and their expression.
+Involuntarily memory conjures up another canvas, _The Gleaners_, and we
+realize that it is impossible to resist that higher appeal which the
+great artists succeed in giving to the most commonplace episode of
+farming life. But, unlike Millet, Bastien-Lepage does not awaken in us
+any compassion for these beings who toil, stooping above the earth; no
+touch of bitterness saddens his pictures, and the types which he shows
+to us have the healthy vigour of peasants who live their lives in the
+open air and love the soil which nourishes them.
+
+This picture, when it appeared, produced a sensation. Coming directly
+after the _Hay-making_, it definitely established Bastien-Lepage's
+talent and placed him in the foremost rank of painters of rural life.
+The critics hailed this powerful canvas with enthusiasm. Theodore de
+Banville, writing of the Salon of 1879, said: "M. Bastien-Lepage is the
+king of this Exposition. Young as he is, he has started in to produce
+masterpieces: he is very wise! For in later years an artist continues to
+copy himself, with more or less cleverness and success; but the creative
+genius has taken wing, like a bird on whose tail we have failed to drop
+the indispensable grain of salt. The _October Season_ pictures the
+harvesting of potatoes. The earth, the encompassing air as far as we can
+see, the sky, the solitude laden with silence, are all evoked for us in
+this picture by the sincerity of its powerful painter; the peasant women
+are done in a masterly manner, and precisely for the reason that he has
+seen them apart from all convention and has not tried to idealize them
+by any hackneyed device."
+
+Albert Wolff was no less enthusiastic: "The colouring in _Women
+harvesting Potatoes_ is ingratiating and discreet; not a discordant
+touch disturbs the beautiful harmony of this canvas, over which the
+silence of the open country has descended, enveloping the obscure toil.
+It is only artists of superior powers who can embody so much charm in a
+single conception."
+
+Another feature of the same Salon was his magnificent portrait of
+_Madame Sarah Bernhardt_, a marvel of expression and of delicate art,
+embodied in a pale symphony of tenderest whites, blending harmoniously
+with the warmest tones of gold. The great tragic actress is portrayed
+draped, almost swathed, in a gown of white china silk, verging on the
+faintest yellowish caste; she is posed in profile, that cameo-like
+profile that has so often been portrayed. She is seated, with a sort of
+intentional rigidity, on a white fur robe, and is examining a statuette
+of Orpheus, in old ivory, which she holds in her hands. Her expressive
+and intellectual features are treated with a vigour which does full
+justice to the classic beauty and virile energy of the sitter.
+
+"The work as a whole," wrote the critic of the _Revue des Beaux-Arts_,
+"possesses supreme distinction and an admirable delicacy of colouring.
+The silvery tones of the whites, the warm grays of the draped gown lead
+up to the freshness of the delicate, rose-like flesh tints, beneath the
+crown of close curled locks that seem at once massive and weightless.
+The artist's hand was sure of itself; it neither groped nor hesitated.
+The execution is such that the drawing of the gown and the lines of the
+face seem to have been traced by an engraver's tool. In this case,
+however, definiteness has not resulted in stiffness. The sharp design
+has not imprisoned unwilling forms; it leaves them free to move as they
+please within the limits of their contours which are its domain. It is
+worth while to examine with a lens the marvellous process which, by
+the aid of imperceptible half-tones, has softened the modelling of the
+face and hands."
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VI.--PORTRAIT OF M. X----
+
+  (Museum at Verdun)
+
+  Bastien-Lepage possessed the rare quality of being able to bestow the
+  same superior skill upon every part of a portrait. Being sincere before
+  all else, he never tried to shirk any difficulty; this is seen in the
+  care he took in painting the hands of all his various sitters, showing
+  something akin to vanity in the marvellous talent he displayed in
+  rendering them. In this portrait--just as in all the others--the hands
+  are quite as truly a miracle of execution as the face itself.]
+
+These two pictures earned Bastien-Lepage the Cross of the Legion of
+Honour and a definite recognition of his talent. The artist could not
+keep his delight to himself and, good son that he was, wished to share
+it with his beloved family; so he sent for them, to pay him a visit in
+Paris. The grandfather and the "good little mother" arrived, full of
+pride in this famous son, of whom the whole world was talking. He showed
+them the sights of the city and was only too happy to have a chance to
+introduce them to his friends; he took his mother to the big shops and
+insisted on choosing silk cloaks and silk dresses for her. The poor
+woman protested, saying that they were far too fine, that she would
+never dare to wear anything like that. "Show us some more," ordered the
+devoted artist, "I want mamma to have her choice of the best there is!"
+
+After the old people had returned home to Lorraine, Bastien-Lepage set
+out for England, where he was to paint the portrait of the Prince of
+Wales, who afterwards became King Edward VII.
+
+In this portrait of tiny dimensions the Prince is represented in fancy
+costume, after the manner of Holbein. His garments recall in a measure
+those worn by King Henry VIII, in the celebrated portrait done by the
+great painter from Basle. The Collar of the Golden Fleece is displayed
+upon his breast. In the background of the picture may be seen dimly,
+through a veil of mist, the panorama of London and the gray ribbon of
+the Thames. The portrait is a little gem, which Bastien-Lepage wrought
+with the minuteness and affectedly hieratic mannerism of Holbein and the
+French primitive school. Although at present in possession of M. Emile
+Bastien-Lepage, it will eventually find its place, together with a
+goodly number of other canvases, in the museum of the Louvre, to which
+the brother of the great artist intends to bequeath them.
+
+It should be mentioned here, in connection with this work, that
+Bastien-Lepage continued to make more and more of a specialty of
+portraits of reduced dimensions, and that he acquired in this respect a
+reputation of the first order. He loved these little canvases, scarcely
+larger than miniatures, and he expended on their scanty surfaces an
+inimitable skill; he embellished them with a wealth of accessory detail
+which brings to mind, as we look at them to-day, the formidable labours
+of the illuminators of the middle ages. But this goldsmith's work, far
+from impairing the effect of the whole, adds a certain fascination to
+it. And he expended upon the study of the face the same degree of
+devotion that he gave to the rendering of a garment. His models relive
+with an intensity of life such as could be expressed only by an artist
+who has made a life-long study of nature in her minutest manifestations.
+
+To name over his portraits would be to mention an equal number of
+masterpieces. The catalogue would be too long, for Bastien-Lepage was
+an indefatigable workman. We may content ourselves with citing those
+that are most widely known: that of _M. Andrieux_, one-time Prefect of
+Police, whose refined features are rendered with striking truth; that of
+_J. Bastien-Lepage_, the artist's uncle, which is here reproduced and
+which shows him violin in hand, a clear and vigorous piece of
+brush-work, transcribing life in telling strokes, with an astonishing
+simplicity of means. This fine example is to be seen to-day in the
+museum at Verdun. And in the same museum there is still another that
+deserves mention; namely, the excellent _Portrait of M. X._ And we must
+not forget the _Portrait of Andre Theuriet_, born, like Bastien-Lepage,
+on the banks of the Meuse and attached to the painter by ties of almost
+fraternal affection. One feels that, in this picture, the heart must
+have guided the hand, for it would be difficult to find another work
+more magisterial in execution and more delicate in finish. And lastly,
+there is _Mme. Bastien-Lepage_, the "good little mother," as the great
+artist and loving son used to call her. He posed her in the garden of
+the home at Damvillers. She is seated on a stone bench; on her knees
+rests a large garden hat; her two hands are crossed, one over the other,
+and in the left she holds a little bunch of field flowers. She is clad
+in a loose dress of sombre colour, cut with a pelerine; and nothing but
+the one bright spot formed by the white collar reveals the severity of
+the costume. The whole attitude of the body in repose is perfect in its
+truth and naturalness; but our admiration changes and quickens to
+emotion when we raise our eyes to the level of the face of this "good
+little mother," a bony, irregular face, almost ugly, but so gentle, so
+kind, so touchingly illumined by the tender caress in the eyes as they
+rest upon the adored son in the course of painting her. Those emaciated
+features, which not even the crown of blonde hair is able to rejuvenate,
+are unmistakably those of a mother; if we had not known, we should
+inevitably have divined it; no one but a son, and a great artist as
+well, could have crowned the brow of a woman with such an aureole of
+gentleness and love.
+
+Bastien-Lepage, whom those who envied him affected to regard as
+dedicated wholly to the reproduction of rustic uncouthness, had no equal
+in catching the radiance of feminine charms, even in their subtlest
+manifestations. No one was more skilled than he in seizing and recording
+the one particular trait, often elusive and intangible, which
+characterizes a woman and makes her beautiful. What delicious portraits
+of women we owe to him! Where could we meet with a more smiling image
+than that of _Mme. Godillot_, radiant and seductive, a rosy vision in
+the black velvet of her gown, relieved by the brilliant sheen of her
+white satin corsage! And what studied and elaborate art was expended on
+the _Portrait of Mme. Klotz_, whose magnificent brunette beauty emerges
+like a gorgeous lily from the surrounding whiteness of her scarf, that
+is all the more dazzlingly white by contrast with her sombre robe! And
+still again, there is the _Portrait of Mme. Juliette Drouet_, another
+beautiful and noble specimen of portraiture. And how marvellously
+Bastien-Lepage could detect the hidden soul lurking in the inmost
+recesses of his models and reveal it behind the transparent screen of
+their eyes! If Bastien-Lepage had not achieved eternal glory as an
+interpreter of rural life, he would still have remained celebrated as a
+portrait painter.
+
+But to Bastien-Lepage portrait painting was only a side issue, a form of
+relaxation between two landscapes; his predilection, his one object in
+life, so to speak, was to return constantly to his peasants, his scenes
+of toil, his fields of Lorraine.
+
+After his return from England he passed some months at Damvillers, when
+an impulse seized him to visit Italy, to which the verdict of a
+prejudiced committee had once upon a time barred his way. He proceeded
+straight to Venice, and it may as well be acknowledged at once,
+Venetian art left him cold, if not indifferent. He had never in the
+least understood any of the big "set pieces," and in spite of all the
+art of Veronese and Titian, in spite of their dazzling flare of colour,
+he never succeeded in understanding their sumptuous allegories or in
+accepting the fantastic interpretation of nature which the Venetians
+allowed themselves. He returned to Damvillers, profoundly disillusioned
+and more than ever convinced that nature alone, such as he saw it, was
+deserving of the attention of the true artist. There would be no object
+in discussing here how rightly or how ill founded such an opinion was;
+we note it only to indicate once more the absolute independence of the
+painter, his fixed determination never to imitate anyone.
+
+And, beyond question, there is no resemblance to any other painter in
+that curious and remarkable picture known as _Jeanne d'Arc listening to
+the Voices_. Lorraine in heart and soul, Bastien-Lepage desired to pay
+his tribute, as so many had done before him, to the glorious
+heroine who, like him, had come from the banks of the Meuse. And he
+wished also to restore her to her natural setting, with the greatest
+degree of historic accuracy. Consequently it is in a Lorraine garden
+surrounding a Lorraine cottage that he shows us Jeanne, the shepherdess;
+around her are the familiar garden utensils such as peasants use to-day
+just as they did in the fifteenth century. She is standing in an
+inspired and attentive attitude, which gives to her whole countenance
+that forceful character which Bastien-Lepage imprints upon all his
+compatriots. For he wished to make her, in a certain sense, a composite
+type of the women of the Lorraine race, such as Theuriet has described:
+"The forehead low but intelligent, the eyes with drooping lids that half
+conceal the somewhat sullen glance; the bones prominent in cheek and
+jaw, the chin square, indicative of an opinionated race; the mouth
+large, with half parted lips, through which one perceives the passage of
+the deep-drawn breath." This head is always the same; under all the
+variations in physiognomy we always meet with the same local type: it is
+the head of the woman in _Hay-making_ and of the _Women gathering
+Potatoes_, and it is also that of the "good little mother," so
+fundamentally and emphatically representative of Lorraine.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE LITTLE CHIMNEY-SWEEP
+
+  (Collection of E. Bastien-Lepage)
+
+  This attractive picture, full of charm and vigour, belongs to the
+  closing years of the artist's life, at the time when he was enjoying the
+  flood tide of his talent. How much force and truth there is in this
+  picture of the little chimney-sweep, and what graceful nimbleness in the
+  movements of the cats that he is watching at play.]
+
+Nevertheless _Jeanne d'Arc listening to the Voices_ was rather badly
+received by the critics. Without disputing the originality and vigour of
+the inspired shepherdess, they reproached the artist for the presence of
+the traditional saints. Bastien-Lepage had indicated these under the
+form of luminous vapour, radiating through the branches overhanging the
+garden: St. Michael in the golden armour of a knight of the fifteenth
+century, St. Margaret and St. Catherine as phantoms so diaphanous as to
+be hardly perceptible. The idealists complained that the picture was
+lacking in idealism; the realists were somewhat disconcerted to find the
+apparitions there at all. It must be acknowledged that Bastien-Lepage
+ceases to be himself the moment that he ventures to attempt the
+supernatural or even allegory pure and simple. He feels that he is no
+longer on familiar ground, he hesitates, he fumbles, and the harmony of
+the work suffers in consequence. Nevertheless, in spite of this
+undeniable defect, the face of Jeanne d'Arc will be remembered as a
+piece of powerful painting and genuine inspiration.
+
+At all events, Bastien-Lepage was keenly aware of the half-way nature of
+his success, and from that day renounced forever the element of the
+marvellous and confined himself to that concrete and tangible poetry
+which emanates from the earth.
+
+Some little time after his _Jeanne d'Arc_, he produced _The Mendicant_,
+veteran knight of the road, whose lazy life is passed in going from door
+to door, asking charity and compelling it if need be; suspicious looking
+old tramp, perhaps a thief as well, who inspires fear and whose sack is
+often filled through unwillingness to provoke him. The artist has
+pictured him with a stout stick in his hand, stowing away the slice of
+bread which a pretty slip of a girl in a blue apron has just given him.
+This fine and vigorous canvas scored almost as much of a success, at the
+Salon of 1881, as the admirable _Portrait of Albert Wolff_, a critic on
+the _Figaro_ and close personal friend of the artist.
+
+In 1882 he won a further success with his superb _Father Jacques_, a
+masterly study of the Lorraine peasant, and with his charming _Portrait
+of Mme. W._
+
+In 1883 came _Love in a Village_, one of his most popular canvases, in
+which he depicted with charming naturalness the uncomplicated and naive
+courtship of rustic lovers. Here are a pair who are untroubled by
+curious glances; the nearer houses of the village are quite close by.
+Bending slightly towards his sweetheart, the man is murmuring his
+avowals in her ear, in a voice that, we suspect, is by no means steady.
+Strapping fellow that he is, he evidently lacks the habit of making
+pretty speeches; we can see that from the embarrassed air with which he
+twists his fingers. His words, however, are plainly not lacking in
+eloquence, for the girl, type of buxom young womanhood that we have
+already learned to know, has bent her head and, although her back is
+turned, we are sure that she is blushing as she listens to his
+declaration. A special atmosphere emanates from this picture, as well as
+that profound spirit of poetry which is inseparable from the eternal
+song of love.
+
+
+
+
+    HIS PREMATURE END
+
+
+At this period Bastien-Lepage had already begun to incur the first
+attacks of the disease which was destined so soon to end his days. He
+suffered violent pains in the kidneys. He became melancholy, nervous,
+irritable; he shut himself up in his studio in the Rue Legendre, and
+even his best friends could not gain admittance. The doctors who were
+called in recognized the gravity of his illness and ordered energetic
+treatment and a change of air. The poor artist reconciled himself to go
+for a time to Brittany, and his choice fell on Concarneau. The keen sea
+air produced a temporary betterment, and he took advantage of it to
+work, for he could not resign himself to lay aside his palette and
+brushes. He spent entire days in a boat and, in spite of his sufferings,
+executed several landscapes of rare beauty. But his condition, instead
+of improving, took a turn for the worse. "The digestive tube," he wrote
+to Theuriet, "is always kicking up a row!" The pain in the kidneys and
+bowels became at this time so violent that he was forced to decide to
+return to Paris, in order to consult the men of science once again.
+
+This time, when Dr. Potain examined him, he could no longer deceive
+himself as to the artist's fate; he saw that his patient was
+irremediably condemned. However, a sojourn in a milder climate might
+prolong his life for a few months; so he advised Algeria. The prospect
+of the journey, the desire to make the acquaintance of this land of
+sunshine which Delacroix, Decamps, and Fromentin had taught him to love,
+for a few days gave a false strength to the poor sufferer, which
+produced a deceptive appearance of renewed health and even deceived the
+artist himself. Besides, Mme. Bastien-Lepage, the "good little mother,"
+was to accompany him, and this unselfish and tender devotion warmed his
+heart. The poor woman forced back her tears in order to smile upon the
+unfortunate son whom she knew to be doomed. And so the pitiful pair set
+forth for the land of sunshine, she consumed with grief, and he almost
+joyous in the hope of a speedy cure.
+
+His first letters to his friends bore the imprint of good spirits;
+Algeria aroused his enthusiasm by its clear and vibrant colours; his
+disease declared a brief truce and he began to form projects. The
+thought of dying had not yet even vaguely occurred to him, though, for
+that matter, he had no fear of death. The previous year he had painted
+_Gambetta on his Death-bed_; and his frequent visits to Ville-d'Avray
+led him to discuss the inevitable end of life. "I am not afraid of
+death," he said, "dying is nothing,--the important thing is to survive
+oneself, and who can be sure of establishing a claim upon posterity? But
+there! I am talking nonsense! So long as our work is true, nothing else
+matters."
+
+But before long the ravages of the disease began to make headway; the
+kidneys no longer performed their function, and he suffered atrocious
+agonies which stretched him for days at a time on his back. Even the
+burning heat of the African sun no longer had strength enough to animate
+his shattered physique; the brush, which the artist from time to time
+still attempted to take up, fell from between his fingers. He,
+Bastien-Lepage, painter of the soil, found himself unable to
+transfer to canvas the enchantment of that land of fairy tale! And
+he poured forth his distress in long and poignant letters, in which
+could be read in every line the loss of hope and the sure prevision of
+the now inevitable end.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VIII.--THE ARTIST'S UNCLE
+
+  (Museum at Verdun)
+
+  Here is still another kindly and vigorous face from Lorraine, forcefully
+  modelled, with salient jaw bones, betraying the obstinacy of the race.
+  An air of good nature softens the energy of this face, and the eyes
+  sparkle with intelligence. This portrait is treated in a free-handed
+  manner, with unfaltering strokes, and its colouring is especially
+  excellent.]
+
+As no amelioration took place, Bastien-Lepage made the return journey to
+Paris towards the end of May, 1884. He went back to his studio in the
+Rue Legendre, where he had formerly passed such happy hours in the full
+enjoyment of a talent at its zenith and a constitution apparently able
+to defy all tests. Now, however, he dragged around a dying body, with
+disease gnawing at his vitals. He could no longer sleep without the aid
+of powerful doses of morphine. The winter-time increased his suffering;
+his strength rapidly failed him; and, on the tenth of December, at six
+o'clock in the evening, he drew his last breath, at the age of
+thirty-six years.
+
+As long as he could hold a brush, Bastien-Lepage continued to work, in
+spite of the sufferings which racked him. During the year preceding his
+death, while he was already experiencing frightful tortures, he painted
+_The Woman making Lye_ and _The Little Chimney-sweep_, the latter of
+which is here reproduced. This admirable canvas is to be seen now at the
+studio of the painter's brother at Neuilly, and forms part of the legacy
+which M. Emile Bastien-Lepage intends to bequeath to the Louvre. It has
+never been shown at any Salon, and for that matter there are a good many
+other paintings and portraits which have never been exhibited in public
+and which are not for that reason any the less remarkable. We may cite
+at random: _The Portrait of M. E. Bastien-Lepage_, _The Prince of
+Wales_, _Mme. Juliette Drouet_, _A Little Girl going to School_, _The
+Little Pedler asleep_, _The Vintage_, _No Help! The Thames at London,
+etc._
+
+The very year of his death, shortly before his departure for Algeria,
+Bastien-Lepage executed a delicious little canvas entitled _The Forge_,
+in which the artist expended a surprising amount of talent and skill,
+and which enables us to realize what extraordinary heights his ever
+progressive genius might have attained, but for the blind and brutal
+cruelty of Destiny.
+
+His death was a time of mourning for the arts; the regrets which he left
+behind him were unanimous. Even those who had been opposed to his
+aesthetic creed paid homage to his great conscientiousness as an artist
+and his noble character as a man.
+
+During March and April, 1885, only a few months after his death, all
+literary and artistic Paris flocked to the Hotel de Chimay, an adjunct
+to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where a posthumous exhibition of his works
+had been organized.
+
+At this exhibition the entire body of his works had been brought
+together. The museums had loaned the canvases which they possessed and
+the private collectors had done their share towards the glorification of
+the artist by entrusting to the organizers a goodly number of paintings
+and portraits which had never figured in any of the Salons.
+
+Thus it was made possible to comprehend at a single glance the life-work
+of this remarkable artist and to appreciate the distance he had
+traversed, the progress he had made during his brief existence, and the
+brilliant prospects that were destroyed by his untimely death.
+
+From all these numerous works, exhibited side by side, what stood out
+most clearly was the unity of thought which had conceived them and the
+dogged fidelity to principles which had controlled their execution. At
+the same time they revealed the amazing adaptability of his talent,
+which essayed the most diverse and conflicting subjects with the same
+realistic vigour, bestowing even upon his vaporous and delicate
+portraits of women a touch which, while light, is unmistakably his own,
+and in which we recognize that noble, conscientious workmanship, free
+from all artifice, which was the distinctive hall-mark both of his
+painting and of his character.
+
+But the quality which dominates all the rest in the work of
+Bastien-Lepage, and which emanates from it like the fragrance which is
+exhaled by certain precious essences, is his ardent and deep-rooted love
+for his native soil. This form of local patriotism, determined by the
+boundaries of Lorraine, underwent a noble expansion to the point of
+encircling the entire earth; for while the painter chose his models out
+of the familiar landscape of his childhood's home, his observation and
+his art broke out of the bounds of this special setting and embraced
+rustic humanity throughout France and even beyond. His peasants are
+unmistakably from the banks of the Meuse in type and in customs, but
+they are from the world at large in gesture and in philosophy of life.
+Whether he comes from the North or from the South, the tiller of the
+soil wages the same conflict with ungrateful furrows, the spade and the
+plough imprint the same calluses on his bony hands, the sun browns his
+energetic and stubborn features to the same deep tan. It is in this
+respect that the art of Bastien-Lepage assumes a higher significance;
+like Millet, it is not a peasant whom he paints, but the peasant,
+forever unchanging in spite of latitude. But if his work has attained
+this higher eminence of generalization, it is precisely for the reason
+that the artist's watchful eye has succeeded in discovering, in the life
+of the peasantry, that state of mind which is common to them all, that
+immutable gesture which they have always made and always will make. He
+has understood and translated with inspired eloquence their rugged
+strength, their naive awkwardness, their simple intelligence.
+
+Another glorious distinction of Bastien-Lepage was that he loved the
+fields as well as he loved the peasants. Not fields drowned beneath
+melancholy shadow and pallid shifting light, but fields bathed in
+sunshine, until the golden tassels of the grain crackle like sparks
+under the fire of the midday sun. Always and everywhere he sought for
+light, and in the midst of it his modest protagonists of rustic life
+stand out in all their vigour.
+
+It would be easy to cite, among our best contemporary painters, a
+considerable number of artists who are brilliantly continuing the
+tradition left by Bastien-Lepage and emulating his predilection for the
+luminous brilliance of the open air. How often, in the presence of a
+canvas by Lhermitte, our thoughts go back to the painter of Lorraine,
+whose vigorous execution and joyous colouring seem to have been
+reincarnated! Art is indebted to Bastien-Lepage for having reinstated
+nature in all her literal truth by proving that, in order to be
+beautiful, she has no need of artificial and superfluous adornment.
+
+Lorraine, out of gratitude, wished to perpetuate the memory of this
+glorious son of the Meuse, who had so eloquently celebrated the vitality
+and poetry of his natal earth. It was at Damvillers itself that it was
+decided to raise a monument to the great painter; and around its
+pedestal there were gathered the "good little mother," all in tears, the
+assembled population of the village and the whole region round about,
+and even the Government took part in the pious ceremony by sending as
+its representative M. Gustave Larroumet, director of the Beaux-Arts.
+This eloquent art critic brought as a tribute to the departed painter
+the official seal of immortality, and he pronounced it in terms vibrant
+with emotion.
+
+"At the moment," he said, "when ordinarily the best of artists have done
+no more than to give indications of their originality and when ripening
+years alone begin to keep the promises of youth, Jules Bastien-Lepage
+died, leaving masterpieces behind him, besides having liberated an
+artistic formula from the tendencies and exaggerations which hampered
+it, and indicated to the art of painting a new pathway along which his
+young heirs are advancing with an assured step. He loved nature and
+truth; he loved his own people, and no one ever lived who was surrounded
+with a greater degree of affection; he inspired faithful friendships
+which he himself enjoyed to the full; and those whom he left behind
+soothe their heart-ache with the balm of tender memories; he practised
+his art without ever making sacrifice to passing fashion or sordid
+profit; there was no place in his mind or in his heart for any other
+than noble and generous thoughts. Let us comfort ourselves, therefore,
+for what his death has taken from us by the thought of what his life has
+left to us, and let us assign him his place in the ranks of the younger
+master painters who have been mown down in full flower, close beside
+that of Gericault and of Henri Regnault."
+
+In his admirable biographic and critical study of Bastien-Lepage, whose
+personal friend he had been, M. L. de Fourcaud, by way of conclusion,
+bids him this touching farewell:
+
+"Poor Bastien-Lepage, snatched away one winter's night, at thirty-six
+years of age, in the fairest flowering of his bright promise, in the
+richest expansion of his personality; may each returning month of May
+bring at least an abundance of blossoms to the apple tree beside his
+grave! For the blossoms of the apple were always, in his eyes, so fair a
+sight!"
+
+To-day he sleeps forever in a corner of that Lorraine land which he
+loved so dearly, and perhaps in the cemetery of his native village his
+shade can still hear the familiar accents of his native dialect. The
+great painter of Lorraine could never have slept his eternal sleep in
+any other soil than that.
+
+Painter of flowers, painter of nature, painter of the earth which is
+forever deathless and forever renewed, Bastien-Lepage has chosen that
+better part; his work will live as long as these, his models, and will
+go down through the centuries in all the splendour of increasing beauty
+and eternal youth.
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Typographical errors have been corrected as
+follows:
+
+Page 22: "Bastine" replaced with "Bastien"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bastien Lepage, by Fr. Crastre
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BASTIEN LEPAGE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 36533.txt or 36533.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/5/3/36533/
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Hunter Monroe and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/36533.zip b/36533.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef59c7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36533.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40654d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #36533 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36533)