Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884)

French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage was born in the village of Damvillers, Meuse, on the 1st of November 1848 and spent his childhood there.

He first studied at Verdun, and prompted by a love of art went in 1867 to Paris, where he was admitted to the École des Beaux-arts, working under Cabanel.

In 1880 he exhibited a small portrait of M. Andrieux and Joan Of Arc listening to the Voices; and in the same year, at the Royal Academy, the little portrait of the Prince of Wales.

In 1881 he painted The Beggar and the Portrait Of Albert I Wolf; in 1882 Le Pre Jacques; in 1888 Love in a Village, in which we find some trace of Courbet's influence.

His last dated work is The Forge (1884). The artist, long ailing, had tried in vain to re-establish his health in Algiers.

He died in Paris on the 10th of December 1884, when planning a new series of rural subjects.

Among his more important works, may also be mentioned the Portrait of Mme J. Drouet (1883); Gambetta on his death-bed, and some landscapes: The Vintage (1880) and The Thames at London (1882).

The Little Chimney-Sweep was never finished.