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Bastien-Lepage, Jules
(French, 1848-1884)
Wood Gatherer (Pere Jacques)
1881
Oil on canvas
77 1/2 x 71 1/2 in.
Gift of Mrs. E. P. Allis and her daughters in memory of Edward Phelps Allis
L102

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Jules Bastien-Lepage devoted himself to representing traditional rural life with honesty and respect.

By the early 1880s, when he painted this scene of gathering wood in the forest, he was recognized as the leader of the Naturalist school and thought by some to be the successor to Manet as a painter of modern life.

This genre scene of a woodsman at work accompanied by his granddaughter juxtaposes the freshness of youth with the fatigue of old age. The quiet message of the passage of time is delivered in a bucolic setting imbued with the color and light characteristic of Impressionism but restrained by an adherence to academic attention to detail and modeling of form. Bastien-Lepage depicted his old family friend and grandchild as legitimate denizens of the forest, perfectly integrated into the natural environment.

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