Stanislas Lepine

“Rue des Saules” in Montmartre, circa 1872 by painter Stanislas Lépine. A delicate, refined work with a free, lively touch.
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right, located on back
Dimensions: 24 x 34.5 cm
With frame: 46.5 x 55 cm
Price: €13,000

Stanislas Lépine, a Montmartre painter

Stanislas Lépine, a Montmartre native by adoption, painted the “Rue des Saules” in Montmartre just before 1872. A second view of the street, dated between 1872 and 1876 (Artcurial, June 17, 1997), shows the gas lanterns hanging on the wall.
The painter depicts the façade of n°22 as that of the “Lapin agile”, one of Bohemia’s favorite meeting places at the beginning of the 20th century.

His canvases painted on the hilltop bear witness not to the Montmartre of parties and balls, but to the Montmartre of alleyways, walls and courtyards, a village that survives as Paris prepares to annex it.

He likes to paint quiet, often deserted streets, as in our paintings. In his later years, he would depict a few rare passers-by, but like Jean Baptiste Corot, he preferred urban “landscapes” without passers-by,

Stanislas Lépine, a sensitive and delicate pre-impressionist painter

Here, the painter’s attention is focused on the streets of old Paris and those of the Butte Montmartre at the dawn of the industrial era. He paints with a free, light touch, his color palette playing on the nuances of stone and nature.

Lépine rubs shoulders with Corot, and the admiration between the two painters is mutual. In our painting, we find something of Corot’s softness and transparency.

Notoriously, Lépine took part in the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874, where he presented three paintings. He rubbed shoulders with Monet, Sisley, Pissarro and Renoir. If it is not related to the movement from a point of view of plastic research, it joins the attraction of the Impressionists for the Paris of modernity.

Biography

Montmartre

Stanislas Lépine, a Montmartre native by adoption, hails from Caen in Normandy. He began а drawing at an early age, attracted by the ports and shores of his province.
He arrived in Paris at the age of 20. Coming from a family of modest craftsmen, he couldn’t afford lessons in a master’s studio. He taught himself and spent time drawing in the Louvre.
To find a place to live, he looked for a neighborhood with affordable rents. He settled in Montmartre, which was not yet part of Paris. Thirty-seven years of life in Montmartre!
Shortly after his arrival, he married his childhood friend Marie Odile Dodin. They are a loving couple.
Appreciating tranquility, they led a simple life and stayed away from fashionable places. Stanislas Lépine was only seen on rare occasions, in the cafés where painters and poets gathered.
It was here that he took part а informal meetings with painter-friends including Sisley and Eugène Boudin.

J.B Corot

He also met Jean Baptiste Corot, for whom he had great admiration. Moved by Lépine’s passion and humility, the 19th-century master of French naturalist landscapes offered him his brushes and his vision of nature, which he applied to urban life.
J. B Corot confided in him that a landscape artist like him “could do masterpieces on the Butte Montmartre.”

Fantin-Latour

Among Stanislas Lépine’s other important encounters, we should also mention Fantin-Latour, who became a loyal friend and who, on several occasions, notably when he had to move and find a new home, didn’t hesitate to help him financially.

Count Doria

Another decisive encounter, which enabled him to continue painting without having to exhaust himself in small survival jobs, was with Count Doria. A wealthy collector and patron of the arts, he became her protector, buying her paintings and taking her in at his chateau in Orrouy.
This attentive and generous man of taste also had a decisive influence on the careers of painters: Corot, Jongkind, Millet at a time when they were either unknown or mocked. He helped to make them better known.

Museums

• Orsay Museum

• Carnavalet Museum

• Department of Graphic Arts of the Louvre Museum.

Source

.https://www.montmartre-secret.com/2024/12/stanislas-lepine-peintre-de-montmartre.html