"Poor Fauvette" by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884)

Poor Little Wild Girl (La Pauvre Fauvette)

Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884)

1881

Oil on canvas

H 162.5 x W 125.7 cm

Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow

Acquisition no. 1323

Purchased 1913

This is one of the rural figures, in rural settings, for which Bastien-Lepage was admired. A little girl's pinched face peeps out of the poor piece of cheap cloth which she wraps round herself for warmth, as she minds a cow. [Commentary continues below.]

Image download, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee.

This image is available on the Creative Commons licence. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

The wintry scene is depicted in close detail. On one side are bare, thorny branches, on the other, dried thistle-heads on tall, bleached stalks. The season might be just coming into spring, because there seem to be some wild flowers by the tree. The varying greens and browns of the artist's open Damvillers landscape are beautifully done, and look entirely natural. D. H. Lawrence was overcome when he saw this painting at the Winter Exhibition at the Royal Academy in February 1909: "There are some glorious pictures," he wrote to his friend May Holbrook:

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. [116]

No wonder the Scottish artists of the time were impressed with Bastien-Lepage's rural scenes.

Related Material

Bibliography

Lawrence, D. H. Letters Vol. I (1901-13). Edited by James T. Bolton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Created 12 March 2020