“Poor Fauvette”
Here is one of Bastien-Lepage’s stunning rural portraits.
“Poor Fauvette”, which translates to “poor little wild girl”, is an oil on canvas painting by the French artist, Jules Bastien-Lepage, from 1881. Bastien-Lepage was a preeminent artist of the Naturalism art movement, a spin-off of the Realism art movement happening at that time.
In this painting, Bastien-Lepage depicts a very expressive girl watching over a cow in the barren winter countryside of France. She holds rags around her for warmth. The girl is dwarfed in size by the small tree and brown teasels on either side of her. This was painted in Bastien-Lepage’s hometown, the small village of Damvillers in northeastern France. In 1881, he returned here to work and focus on the most innocent victims of poverty, the children.
Although contemporary with Jean-François Millet, and both artists painted the rural poor as a subject, Bastien-Lepage liked to focus on individuals with as much detail as he could render. He followed a formula with much of his work, which this piece exhibits. There is a high background horizon, a detailed foreground, depth provided by an expansive middle ground, and a solitary figure with expressive eyes and face.
At a posthumous exhibition of this painting in February 1909 at the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Academy, D.H. Lawrence, the famed English novelist, wrote to his friend, May Holbrook, and said about this piece:
“The most notable painter is a French Peasant, Bastien Lepage. Ah, you should see a beautiful woman in dark velvet costume with great orange feathers flowing onto her shoulders stand looking at Pauvre Fauvette. She looks, she pouts, her mouth relaxes. “Too sad” she says to the gentleman. “But the country does desolate one like that; I have felt like it myself.” She moves on…. Pauvre Fauvette is a terrible picture of a peasant girl wrapped in a lump of sacking; you feel her face paint itself on your heart, and you turn away; the sorrow is too keen and real. The academy is full of magnificent works.”
Many critiques credit Bastien-Lepage with helping expedite the more general acceptance of impressionism art by the public. His work, though realistic, had an overall lighter palette. His subjects were also different, in that instead of creating large history or religious pieces, he focused on more rural lifeways and people. Bastien-Lepage’s work was widely shown in Britain and was very influential on the Glasgow Boys, a group of artists from Scotland.
“Poor Fauvette” is currently in the collections of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland.
For more on Jules Bastien-Lepage, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
