Jules Bastien-Lepage

Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884) bridged the gap between Realism and Impressionism, creating what critics called "impressionism corrected." Born in Damvillers, France, the son of a vineyard worker, he showed talent early. His father, himself an amateur artist, gave him his first lessons before sending him to Verdun for formal training.

In 1867, Bastien-Lepage arrived in Paris and entered the École des Beaux-Arts, studying under Alexandre Cabanel. The Franco-Prussian War interrupted his studies. He fought, was wounded, and returned home to recover. Back in his village, he began painting the peasants he'd grown up with. His 1874 Portrait of my Grandfather earned him a third-class medal at the Salon and his first real recognition.

Émile Zola had mixed feelings about the work, describing it as "impressionism sweetened and adapted to the taste of the crowd." But the crowds loved it. Haymaking (1877), now at the Musée d'Orsay, established him as the leader of French Naturalism. He worked en plein air, capturing peasants in their actual environments with an attention to detail that felt almost photographic. His most ambitious painting, Joan of Arc (1879), broke with academic tradition by depicting France's national hero as an ordinary peasant girl in a garden. It hangs today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That same year, his portrait of Sarah Bernhardt earned him the Legion of Honor. He was thirty-one. Five years later, at thirty-six, he was dead from testicular cancer. His influence spread through the Glasgow Boys in Scotland and Tom Roberts in Australia. He was, as one contemporary noted, "comparable to Manet" in his impact on a generation of painters.