Jules Bastien-Lepage was born at Damvillers, on November 1, 1848, in a house which forms one of the corners of that square of which I have just spoken; a simple, well-to-do farmer’s house, the front coloured yellow, the shutters grey.
On opening the outer door one finds oneself at once in the kitchen, the regular kitchen of the Meuse villages, with its high chimney-piece surmounted by cooking utensils, with its rows of copper saucepans, itsmaie for the bread, and its dresser furnished with coloured earthenware. The next room serves at once as sitting-room and dining-room, and even, at need, as bed-chamber. Above are some apartments not in general use, and then some vast granaries with sloping rafters.
It was in a room on the ground floor, with windows looking to the south, that the painter of Les Foins (Hay) and of Jeanne d’Arc first saw the light. The family consisted of the father, a sensible, industrious, methodical man; of the mother, a woman of the truest heart and untiring devotion; and of the Grandfather Lepage, formerly a collector of taxes, who now found a home with his children. They lived in common on the modest produce of the fields, which the Bastiens themselves cultivated, and on the grandfather’s small pension.
At five years old Jules began to show an aptitude for drawing, and his father was eager to cultivate this dawning talent. He himself had a taste for the imitative arts, employing his leisure in light work that required a certain manual skill, and to this he brought the scrupulous exactness and conscientious attention which were his ruling qualities.
From this time, in the winter evenings, he required that Jules should draw with pencil on paper the various articles in use upon the table—the lamp, the jug, the inkstand, etc. It was to this first education of the eye and of the hand that Bastien-Lepage owed that love of sincerity, that patient seeking for exactness of detail, which were the ruling motives of his life as an artist.
In thus urging him to draw every day, the father had no idea of making his son a painter. At that time, especially at Damvillers, painting was not looked upon as a serious profession. The dream that he cherished, along with the grandfather, was to put Jules in a position to choose later on one of the administrative careers, such as overseer of forests, or bridges, or high-ways, which are always easiest of access to those who have been well trained in drawing. So, as soon as he should be eleven years old, he was to leave the communal school, and go to the College.
