Jules Bastien-Lepage

Jules Bastien-Lepage

Jules Bastien-Lepage was born in Damvillers, France on November 1, 1848. His father grew grapes in a vineyard and sold them to support the family. Jules started to show that he was interested in drawing ever since he was very little and his parents supported his interest by buying him prints of paintings for him to copy. By the time he was nine years old he was very good at drawing with pencils. He went to the Verdun seminary and won every prize for drawing. He had now decided that he wanted to be a great painter. He was later sent to Paris, which was a very good place to go to study art at the time.

In Paris he supported himself by working as a postal clerk. He did this until he realized that he could not be an artist and a clerk at the post office at the same time and quit the postal service. When he quit, he returned home for a short time, and then came to Paris to study with Cabanel. He worked with him until the summer of 1870. During this time he showed off his work.

At this time the Franco-Prussian war broke out. Jules voluntarily fought when men were needed for the troops. At this time he was already a man. After the war he went back home and began to paint the villagers there, which he liked to use as subjects. In 1873 he painted his grandfather in the garden. This painting later became a favorite for a lot of art lovers because it looked so realistic.

In 1874 Jules began to win awards. He won a third-class medal for a painting he did of the museum of Verdun. The government later bought it from him. In 1875, he won second class for a painting of a man named Monsieur Simon Hayem. In 1875 the competition of the Prix de Rome took place. Jules entered his painting The Angels Appearing to the Shepherds. He worried that the painting wouldn't have a good chance of winning because even though the event between angel and shepherd happened at night Jules decided to paint the scene at dawn so the slight color of the items in the scene were visible. Jules felt that painting night scenes was not good because it had certain unpaintable qualities. Because he changed this part in his painting it won second prize and not first.