Victor Hugo

This portrait of Victor Hugo was painted in 1884, the year of Bastien-Lepage's death and, as it happened, the year before Hugo's own death in 1885. The sitting brought together two of France's most celebrated cultural figures: Hugo, eighty-two years old and a living monument to French literary culture, and Bastien-Lepage, thirty-six and dying of cancer but still at work. The portrait is now held in the Maison de Victor Hugo in Paris, the museum dedicated to the writer's memory in the Place des Vosges, making it an emblem of their personal connection. For Bastien-Lepage, who had built close relationships with Paris's literary and theatrical intelligentsia — including Sarah Bernhardt and the writer André Theuriet — this portrait represented a crowning achievement of his celebrity connections. Hugo's immense cultural prestige at the end of his life meant that Bastien-Lepage's portrait was both a personal statement of admiration and a social document of the highest significance in fin-de-siècle French culture.

The aged Hugo required a handling of face and figure that emphasized the monumental quality of an old man's physiognomy — deep lines, physical gravitas, and the quality of a face shaped by decades of experience. Bastien-Lepage's naturalist directness served this subject well.