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Retour des Champs (Return from the Fields)

Retour des Champs (Return from the Fields)

Series Title: L’Eauforte en 1878, Paris, 1878 (plate 9)

Artist: Jules Bastien-Lepage (French, 1848 - 1884)

Publisher: Alfred Cadart (French, 1828 - 1875)

Date: 1878
Medium: ink on paper
Dimensions:
Framed: 19 3/16 x 14 3/16 x 1 in. (48.7 x 36 x 2.5 cm)
Sheet: 16 13/16 x 11 7/8 in. (42.7 x 30.2 cm)
Image: 10 1/2 x 7 9/16 in. (26.7 x 19.2 cm)
Credit Line:Museum Purchase
Object number: 1930.46.1
A painter-etcher who was deeply interested in a naturalistic approach to painting and graphic work, Bastien-Lepage frequently depicted scenes of everyday life in the countryside. He was intimately familiar with such scenes, as he grew up on a farm. In addition to creating naturalistic portraits, the artist recorded rural peasants toiling in the fields in the tradition of Realists Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. This etching is typical of his favored subject matter, showing a solitary heroic peasant, hand-on-hip with a wooden rake resting on her shoulder following a day's hard labor.
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