Portrait of a child reading - Alice BASTIDE

Title : Portrait of a child reading

Artist : Alice BASTIDE (Saint Mandé 1868 – Paris 1959)

Technique : Oil on canvas

Dimensions : 100 x 72,4 cm

Signed and dated lower right - 1912

Daughter of a pastor from Gard and an English woman, Alice Bastide grew up in Paris. A student at the Jullian Academy, she began her apprenticeship under the advice of Henri Royer and François Schommer. The development of his art is mainly oriented towards still lifes, without completely abandoning portraits and landscapes. Her other specialty for which she received numerous awards is miniatures. At the Salon of 1914 she received the Maxime David prize for the best piece while her finesse was already noticed by press critics in 1907. Crowning achievement, in 1926 she received a gold medal at the Salon for her miniature Coquetterie.

In 1896, the young woman married a man from Gard, Auguste Massebiaux, whose name she would occasionally bear. The latter, a lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal, died in 1910. The couple had no children. At this time she was domiciled at 48 avenue d'Orléans (later named avenue du général Leclerc) in Paris where she lived until her death in 1959.

Until the mid-1930s she continued to exhibit at the Salon des Artistes Français in a manner very close to impressionism, luminous and vigorous.

In 1912, two years after the death of her husband, Alice Bastide was certainly still marked by the sadness of her mourning. The tones of our portrait of a little girl and the frame she assembles for it are dark and heavy. This child, wearing an embroidered cap, is leaning over her reading, her loose hair flowing over a red velvet house dress. This intimate portrait on a dark tapestry background is framed by a neo-Gothic cardboard ornament. The particular and unusual style on a portrait, especially of a child, remains entirely consistent with the image and gives the whole an exceptional character.