October

Exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1879, this painting is one of a pair of harvest scenes that marked a new direction in Jules Bastien-Lepage’s career as a painter. October is an account of the bleak autumnal potato harvest set in a bare and featureless landscape. Here, inspired by the example of Millet and Courbet, Bastien-Lepage had planned to paint rural life as he knew it, celebrating its hardships as well as the inherent dignity of the peasants themselves. He particularly despised those city painters whose sentimental views of rustic life confirmed their ignorance of it, but whose works continued to fill the annual Salons. The choice of large canvases for his harvest scenes not only indicates Bastien-Lepage’s ambitious artistic program, but also bespeaks his confidence in his own technical virtuosity. It was perhaps this latter element that was most noticed by Salon audiences. The public was pleased by the artist’s ability to combine the high ‘finish’ expected of a conventional academic picture with the looser brushwork associated with the Impressionists.