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Bastien-Lepage has a preparatory sketch for Les Foins. Indeed, the Mesdag Museum is rich in frottis, painted-in pictures, by such men as Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Vollon, Millet, Dupré. As we admire the etchings of Mari Bauer, it was a new pleasure to see half a dozen of his paintings, chiefly scenes in the Orient.
The Bastien-Lepage portrait originated that evening, and is certainly a Beefsteak Room portrait, although Henry gave two sittings for it afterwards at Grafton Street. At the supper itself Bastien-Lepage drew on a half-sheet of paper for me two little sketches, one of Sarah Bernhardt and the other of Henry, which are among my most precious relics.
Whistler actually kept silent in his presence possibly expecting a repetition of the mot: "My dear friend, you conduct yourself in life just as if you had no talent at all." Manet good-naturedly took a browbeating, but the Academic set were outraged by the irreverence of Degas. What hard sayings were his! Poor Bastien-Lepage, too, came in for a scoring.
The trouble is that only certain types of men and women the expressive types which are useful to us appeal to our observation. I remember one supper very well at which Bastien-Lepage was present, and "Miss Sarah" too. The artist was lost in admiration of Henry's face, and expressed a strong desire to paint him.
Saint-Gaudens gave me a cast of his medallion of Bastien-Lepage, and wrote to a friend of mine that "Bastien had 'le coeur au métier. So has Miss Terry, and I will place that saying in the frame that is to replace the present unsatisfactory one." He was very fastidious about this frame, and took such a lot of trouble to get it right.
The picture seemed to them also a combination of many things, or rather of attempts at many things Burne-Jones' mystical colour the rustic character of a Bastien-Lepage or a Millet with the jewelled detail of a fourteenth-century Florentine, so wonderful were the harebells in the foreground, the lichened rocks, the dabbled fleece of the lamb: but they realised that it was a combination that only a remarkable talent could have achieved.
The cathedral stands for the age-long meditation of the ascetics in the midst of battling tribes. This brooding architecture has a blood-brotherhood with the meditating, saint-seeing Jeanne d'Arc. There is in the Metropolitan Museum a large and famous canvas painted by the dying Bastien-Lepage; Jeanne Listening to the Voices.
She now met Bastien-Lepage, who, while he was somewhat severe in his criticism of her work, told her seriously that she was "marvellously gifted." This gave her great pleasure, and, indeed, just at this time the whole tone of the journal and her art enthusiasm are most comforting after the preceding despairing months.
Saint-Gaudens gave me a cast of his medallion of Bastien-Lepage, and wrote to a friend of mine: "Bastien had 'le coeur au métier. So has Miss Terry, and I will place that saying in the frame that is to replace the present unsatisfactory one." He was very fastidious about this frame and took such a lot of trouble to get it right.
I mean, of course, Bastien-Lepage. There is an important difference between the two. In Courbet the sentiment of reality dominates the realism of the technic; in Bastien-Lepage the technic is realistically carried infinitely farther, but the sentiment quite transcends realism. Imagine Courbet essaying a "Jeanne d'Arc!"
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