Page:Bryan's dictionary of painters and engravers, volume 1.djvu/148

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A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF


other, 'Our Saviour and the Samaritan Woman;' and in the church of San Clernente was the ' Virgin Mary, St. Anne, and St. Joacliini.' He died in 1782.

BASSI, Francesco, was born at Bologna in 1652 (?), and was, it is said, a scholar of Lorenzo Pasinelli. According to other authorities he was a scholar of Cesare Gennari and of Guercino. He painted numerous pictures in the public edifices at Bologna, and also worked at Florence. He died in 1732 (?). He was distinguished as a copyist and imitator of Guercino.

BASSI, Francesco Maria, ' the elder,' was born at Cremona in 1642. He acquired the name of ' II Crenionese dei Paesi,' from his eminence in paint- ing landscapes, which he touched with great spirit, and at the same time sufficiently finished. He decorated them with figures and animals, tolerably drawn, and neatly painted. The private collections at Venice possess many of his pictures. He died about the year 1700. His nephew, Francesco Maria, 'the younger,' who studied under him, was a painter of no great note. He worked till 1750.

BAST, Dominique de, born at Ghent in 1782, was an amateur painter of landscapes and cattle, and also of marine subjects, in which he was considered to excel, in consequence of his having made many voyages by sea as a merchant. His pictures are chiefly to be seen in Ghent in private collections.

BASTARD, a painter, executed about the end of the 17th century a large picture, not without merit, of ' Our Lord served by Angels in the Desert,' for the Jesuits' College of Palma, the capital of the island of Majorca. No other record of his work or life has been preserved.

BASTARD, Giuseppe del. See Pdglia.

BASTARUOLO, II. See Mazzuoli, Giuseppe.

BASTIANI, Lazzaro, a Venetian artist, lived in the latter half of the 15th century. His eariy pictures show his Paduan education. He was an imitator of Vivarini. In 1470, he was an honoured member of the College of San Girolamo, Venice; and in 1508 was chosen by Bellini to value Giorgione's frescoes ; he also received the com- mission to paint the Portraits of the Doges, in the Hall of the Twenty. The dates of Bastiani's birth and death are unknown. He did not paint much after 1490. The following are some of his best works :

Bergamo. ZochisCar- 1 Coronation of the Virgin {painted rara Gal. j in 1490). Venice. Academy. The Nativity (painted in 1490). „ „ St. Cenofrio ou his tree {painted m 1490). ,> „ Gift of the Kelic (painted for the scuola of San Giovanni Lvanyel' ista). „ Correr Mus. The Anuunciation. „ Sant"" Antonio. The Entombment (his earliest knoicn work). Vienna. Belvedere. The Glorification of St. Venaranda (much damaged).

BASTIANINO. See Filippi.

BASTIEN-LEPAGE, Jules, painter, w.as born at Danivillers, Lorraine, November 1, 1850. His parents were poor, and in his early manhood he had a hard struggle for existence. He began life as a government clerk in his native district, but at nineteen quitted the desk, and coming to Paris, entered Cabanel's atelier. Associated as his name now is with an art essentially actual and realistic, it is curious to find him making his dehut in pseudo-pastoral in 18th century taste. One of his earliest recorded works is 'Women in a wood attacked by Cupids,' and in 1874 In: exhibited iit the Salon a peasant girl surrounded by piping Cupids, together with his first notable work, 'Le Portrait du Grandpfere.' The following year was marked by the production of one of his most pathetic and masterly studies of humble life, ' La Petite Communiante.' In this same year he competed for the ' prix de Rome' with a remarkable work, ' Les Bergers' ('The Angels appearing to the Shep- herds '). The art section of the Academy awarded it the prize, but their decision was overruled by the majority of the Council. The disappointment, though severe, did him good service. An outcry was raised agaiiist the injustice of the reversal, and Bastien-Lepage'snamebecamewell known through- out the country. He himself used to assert that this was the starting-point of his career. For the remaining years of his life he was a prominent figure in the Frenth art world, and became well known in this country as an exponent of the tra- ditions of Millet and Courbet, modified by his own vigorous individuality. He is said to have expressed an ambition to paint a cycle of rustic subjects, setting forth the chief events of peasant life in childliood, maturity, and old age, and such pictures as ' Les Foins,' ' La Saison d Octobre,' ' Le Men- diant,' and ' Pauvre Fauvette ' may be taken as links in the sequence. His ' Joan of Arc ' of 1880, in which, discarding convention, he represents his heroine as a poor and even squalid peasant girl, glorified by a mystic spiritual grandeur, may be said to sunnnarize his artistic idea. He died in Paris of cancer of the stomach, at the early age of thirty-six, December 3, 1886. Besides the works above mentioned, the following are remarkable:

The Wood-Cutter. My Parents. Rustic Courtship. Portrait of the Friuce of Wales. ,, ,, Madame Sarah Bernhardt. „ „ M. Albert Wolf, of the Paris ' Figaro.' (See ' Bastien-Lepage,' by Theuriet, London, 1892.)

BASTIER DE BEZ, Jean Joseph, French land- scape painter, was bom at Le Vigan (Gard) in 1780. He commenced life as a money-changer, but afterwards became a pupil of Watelet, and painted a large number of views in Italy and France. He died about 1845.

BASTON, Thomas, an English painter of sea- pieces and shipping, flourished about the year 1721. Several of his pictures were engraved by Kirkall, Harris, and others. He etched a few plates from his own designs ; among them is a print representing the ' Royal Anne,' with other ships.

BATEMAN, James, was born in London in 1814, and at first starting in life was placed with a painter on glass. Though very fond of art, this branch was not to his taste. He soon gave it up. and accepted a situation as clerk, which he held till 1837, in which year he received an oiler from two gentlemen, who agreed to take all the pictures he produced in the first year, at the same time allowing him £100. He usually painted animals and domestic subjects, with much humour. He first exhibited at the British Institution in 1840, and at the Royal Academy in the following year, continuing to do so until his death, in March 1849.

BATHEM. See Battem.

BATLEY, an English engraver in mezzotint.

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