Jules Bastien-lepage (1848-1884), "clair De Lune à Damvillers", Oil On Canvas Signed Dated

We would like to thank Mr. Charles Villleneuve de Janti, former chief curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy, for giving us valuable information in order to write this notice. Provenance: Collection of Baroness Daumesnil (1795-1884), remained in the family by descent Signed and dated "82" at the bottom right Oil on canvas Height: 43 cm - Width: 37 cm 1882 In its wooden frame and molded stucco , sculpted and gilded Our work is a twilight vision of the native village of Jules Bastien-Lepage. In front of the moonlight, the typical Lorraine bell tower stands out, while, in the half-light in the foreground and second plan, you can see the silhouette of a couple of peasants completing their day's work. Biography: Jules Bastien, known as Jules Bastien-Lepage, born November 1, 1848 in Damvillers and died December 10, 1884 in Paris, is a French naturalist painter. Originally from Lorraine, Jules Bastien-Lepage, from a modest background, did not form painting until late. The man Emile Zola considered in 1879 as the "grandson of Courbet and Millet" and as one of the tenors of naturalism, received academic training in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel. After two failures, in 1875 and 1876, at the competition for the Prix de Rome, Bastien-Lepage was able to build an original work. He knew how to look on the side of the realists, his elders, but also on the side of his contemporaries, defenders of the new painting, from which he borrows light tones and a vibrant touch. Bastien-Lepage mainly devotes his short existence to two types of subjects: portraits first, which earned him a loyal clientele among artists - from Sarah Bernhardt to elder Coquelin - and within the republican bourgeoisie - from Simon Hayem to Leon Gambetta-, and the peasant subjects then, which he often brushes on the places of his childhood, seducing the public of the Salon with Les Foins (1877, Musée d'Orsay), Saison Octobre (1878, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria), to Père Jacques (1881, Milwaukee Art Center) and to L'Amour au village (1882, Moscow, Pushkin Museum). When success came, the artist traveled, notably to England, Switzerland and Italy, from where he brought back landscapes but also paintings halfway between portraits and genre scenes, in which he sketched rural and city life. children and adolescents, heroes of his sleepy little hawker (1882, Tournai, Museum of Fine Arts) or his little boot shiner in London (1882, Paris, Museum of Decorative Arts). Jules Bastien-Lepage unfortunately could not give the full measure of his talent, he died prematurely at 36 years old, on December 10, 1884, in his workshop on rue Legendre in Paris. And yet, he leaves an original and innovative work. His paintings appear in the largest museums in the world: Paris, London, New York, Moscow, Melbourne, Philadelphia, etc ... The day after his death, newspapers around the world report the untimely death of the painter and his burial in the Damvillers family cemetery, in the Meuse. In some ten years of activity, this son of modest farmers has conquered an eminent place on the French and international artistic scene, even if it was sometimes contested. Number of discoveries concerning the biography of the artist, the history and the intention expressed by his works, now allow to abandon the romantic vision offered to the public by his family and friends after his early disappearance, to draw the report of his incessant social struggle and of his engaged aesthetic struggle. Exhibition catalog, Musée d'Orsay "CLair de Lune à Damvillers": Nocturnal scenes are rare in Bastien-Lepage's work and take place at the end of his short existence. Evidenced by this, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Nancy, his "Moonrise in Algiers" which was given in 1938 by his brother Emile as the artist's last canvas. In the same register, we can also mention "La Chaine" or "Incendie au village" (Museum of Fine Arts of Tournai) dated 1881-1882 where there is a very cloudy sky, almost threatening, which dominates peasants reduced to simple laboring shadows. Still in the area of nocturnes, the Magnin Museum in Dijon retains an astonishing "view of Venice" also dated from 1880-1881. Despite the originality of Moonlight, our work remains representative of the artist who likes to translate with force, the epic of the French countryside, and depicts the peasants in their simplicity as in their overwhelming. The cold, at night, the slightly bent posture of the farmer due to the fatigue of a day's work in the open air, the fork on his shoulder, reveals difficult living conditions and daily life. The color palette is cold and dark at the same time, however the little full moon light despite a crowded sky clings to the serifs. Indeed, it is an overcast sky that the moon manages to pierce, making the church tower appear in against the light in which it is delicately reflected on the surface. In the interests of perfect realism, the protagonists are represented by black masses whose obscurity hides the expressions of their faces. We understand, however, that their eyes meet.