Peasants Resting (Étude de figure en plein air, effet de soleil)

Jules Bastien-Lepage first showed Haymaking (Les Foins) at the Paris Salon of 1878 (fig. 5).See William Steven Feldman, “The Life and Work of Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884),” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1973), 89–106; Marie-Madeleine Aubrun, Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1848–1884: Catalogue raisonné de...

Nineteenth-century practice was to varnish paintings at the very last minute, when the work was already hanging in the exhibition: oil paintings had to be left the maximum time possible to dry before the varnish was applied. The vernissage, varnishing day – the day before the exhibition opened to the public – was an institution during...