Alice Bastide (1868-1959) Portrait Of A Little Girl Reading

Alice BASTIDE
(Saint Mandé 1868 – Paris 1959)
Portrait of a little girl reading
Oil on canvas
H. 100 cm; L. 72.5 cm
Signed lower right and dated 1912

Daughter of a pastor from Gard and an English woman, Alice Bastide grew up in Paris. A pupil of the Jullian Academy, she began her apprenticeship under the guidance of Henri Royer and François Schommer. The development of his art is mainly oriented towards still lifes, without completely abandoning portraits and landscapes. Her other specialty for which she received numerous awards is miniatures. At the Salon of 1914 she received the Maxime David prize crowning the best piece while her finesse was already noticed by press critics from 1907. Coronation, in 1926 she received a gold medal at the Salon for her miniature Coquetterie. In 1896, the young woman married a man from Gard, Auguste Massebiaux, whose name she would occasionally bear. The latter, a lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal, died in 1910. The couple had no children. At that time she was domiciled at 48 avenue d'Orléans (later named avenue du general Leclerc) in Paris where she lived until her death in 1959. Until the mid-1930s she continued to exhibit at the Salon des Artistes French with a manner very close to Impressionism, luminous and vigorous. In 1912, two years after the death of her husband, Alice Bastide was certainly still marked by the sadness of her mourning. The tones of our portrait of a little girl and the frame she puts together are dark and heavy. This child, wearing an embroidered bonnet, is bent over her book, her loose hair flowing over a red velvet indoor dress. This intimate portrait on a dark tapestry background is framed by a cardboard neo-Gothic ornament. The particular and unusual style on a portrait, which is moreover of a child, remains completely consistent with the image and gives the whole an exceptional character.