Self-portrait at 32 years old

Self-Portrait at 32 Years Old, painted in 1880 and held at the Musée Bastien-Lepage in Damvillers — the museum dedicated to the artist in his home village — shows the painter at exactly the age indicated by the title. The Damvillers museum's possession of this work is fitting: the village was the source of much of his greatest art and now preserves his memory. In 1880, Bastien-Lepage was at his creative peak, had just exhibited Joan of Arc (1879) to enormous critical success, and was receiving commissions from Paris's elite. He was also, though he did not yet know it, within four years of death. The self-portrait at thirty-two is thus a record of maturity without yet the shadow of mortality that hangs over the 1880 Orsay self-portrait. The Damvillers Musée Bastien-Lepage, situated in the house where he grew up, provides the most intimate possible context for a self-portrait painted by a local boy who had conquered Paris.

The self-portrait at thirty-two shows the artist's naturalist technique applied to himself with the same direct scrutiny he gave his rural subjects. The handling is confident and unsparing — face observed rather than flattered, expression matter-of-fact rather than theatrical.