Portrait of Madame Waskiewicz

Portrait of Madame Waskiewicz, painted in 1881 and now in Stockholm's Nationalmuseum, depicts a sitter whose Polish surname suggests Central European connections within the international social world of Third Republic Paris. By 1881 Bastien-Lepage's portrait commissions came from across Paris's cosmopolitan professional and intellectual circles, and the Nationalmuseum's acquisition of this work — alongside the 1878 Sarah Bernhardt portrait — reflects the systematic Swedish acquisition of significant French painting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Waskiewicz portrait belongs to the category of Bastien-Lepage's society portraits — commissions from the bourgeoisie and haute bourgeoisie that provided income and reputation — rather than his intimate portraits of personal friends. The Stockholm collection positions this work within a broader holding of European art that allowed comparison with portraits by Bastien-Lepage's contemporaries in France and abroad.

The society commission required Bastien-Lepage to navigate the tension between his naturalist directness and the social expectations of a commissioned portrait. The handling attempts to maintain his characteristic psychological observation while accommodating the social requirements of bourgeois portraiture.