Clausen, Courbet, and Bastien-Lepage

Hi John,

It's always a treat to hear the interpretation of one master artist on another, so when I stumbled across this critical analysis of Bastien-Lepage's work by Sir George Clausen, who was both a contemporary and worked in the same genre, I know it would be perceptive.

Enjoy,

BoldBrush Studio Team

Sir George Clausen (1852-1944) was just a bit younger than Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884), but Lepage died at the age of only thirty-six, so his career was greatly abbreviated. Sir George Clausen enjoyed a much longer career and like many of the realists of his age was strongly impacted by Lepage's unique vision of realism, so that in some ways he carried Bastien-Lepage's legacy into the future. In this excerpt ofClausen's essay, written in 1892 in the midst of Clausen's working career, he comments on one of Bastien-Lepage's most famous paintings, Joan of Arc, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York. The painting provoked controversy from the time it was first exhibited in 1879, and Clausen takes on the debate:

"In spite of the wide range of his (Bastien-Lepage's) work and the extraordinary versatility of his execution, he kept, as a rule, within certain limitations of treatment. He did not care for the strong opposition of light and shadow, and he seems almost to have avoided those aspects of nature which depend for their beauty on the changes and contrasts of atmosphere and light. All that side of nature which depends on memory for its realization was left almost untouched by him, and yet it is idle to suppose that so richly gifted a man could not have been keenly sensible to all nature's beauty; but I think he found himself hedged in by the conditions necessary to the realization of the qualities he sought. For in painting a large figure-picture in the open air, the painter must almost of necessity limit himself to the effect of grey open daylight. This he realized splendidly; at the same time it may be said that he sought elaboration of detail perhaps at the expense of effect, approaching nature at times too much from the point of view of still-life. This is not felt in his small pictures, in which the point of view is so close that the detail and general effect can be seen at the same time; but in his large works much that is charming in the highest degree when examined in detail, fails to carry its full value to the eye at a distance necessary to take in the whole work. This was the case with "Joan of Arc" in the Paris Exhibition of two years ago; and it was instructive to compare this picture with Courbet's "Stone-Breakers," which hung near it on the same wall. Courbet had generalized as much as possible--everything was cleared away but the essentials; and at a little distance Courbet showed in full power and completeness, while the delicate and beautiful work in "Joan of Arc" was lost, and the picture flat and unintelligible in comparison."

For context, Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) is considered by many the first significant artist in the realist movement. He pushed against the strictures of the Parisian academy and painted works on themes of social realism. The Stone Breakers was one of his first major works, and like Joan of Arc after it, occasioned a storm of debate upon its debut in the Salon of 1850. It was destroyed during World War II, which is why we have no good image of it today, but even in this reproduction you can see the strong values and visual hierarchy on which Clausen comments. Clausen finishes with this assessment:

"No doubt Bastien-Lepage worked for truth of impression and of detail too, but it is apparently impossible to get both; and this seems to show that the building-up or combining a number of facts, each of which may be true of itself and to the others, does not in its sum total give the general impression of truth. It is but a number of isolated truths. Bastien-Lepage has carried his endeavour in this direction farther than any of his predecessors--in fact it may be said that he has carried literal representation to its extreme limit: so much so as to leave clearly discernible to us the question which was doubtless before him, but which has at any rate developed itself from his work, whether it is possible to attain literal truth without leaving on one side much of that which is most beautiful in nature? And further, the question arises, whether literal truth is the highest truth. For realism, as an end in art, leads nowhere; it is an impasse. Surely it is but the means to whatever the artist has it in him to express."(Quoted fromJules Bastien-Lepage and his art. A memoir. )

In light of Clausen's comments, it's interesting to view his own work and compare it with that Bastien-Lepage, and evaluate how well Clausen achieves these goals in his own paintings.

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