Jules Bastien Lepage | Peintre naturaliste français

Jules Bastien Lepage (1848-1884), French painter, was born in the village of Damvillers, Meuse, France, 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.