The only son of a village schoolmaster, his precocious
drawing skill won him an annual grant from the state. In 1863
he went to Paris and became a student at the Petite Ecole. Jean-Charles
Cazin, a fellow pupil, became a lifelong friend and Lhermitte
later got to know Alphonse Legros, Henri Fantin-Latour, Jules
Dalou and Rodin, who had all studied at the school. In 1864 his
charcoal drawing the Banks of the Marne near Alfort was exhibited
at the Salon. He continued to exhibit his drawings at the Salon
until 1889.
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Les Blanchisseuses, 1886
Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, NY |
In 1866 his first oil painting, Violets in a
Glass, Shells, Screen, was exhibited at the Salon, and he produced
his first etching, for his friend Frederic Henriet’s book
Payagiste aux champs. In 1869 he made his first visit to London,
where he met Legros. On his second visit in 1871 Legros recommended
him as an illustrator for Works of Art in the Collections of England
Drawn by E. Lie and introduced him to the dealer Durand-Ruel,
who agreed to sell several of his drawings. In 1873 Durand-Ruel
sent some of Lhermitte’s works to the Dudley Gallery for
the first of the annual Black and White exhibitions and Lhermitte
subsequently became a regular participant.
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Les Faneurs, 1887
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam |
Lhermitte won a third-class medal in the Salon
of 1874 for his painting The Harvest that was bought by the state.
In 1879 Degas noted in a sketchbook his intention to invite Lhermitte
to exhibit with the Impressionists, but Lhermitte never participated
in any of their shows. The Tavern, exhibited in the Salon of 1881,
initiated the monumental series of paintings on the life of the
agricultural worker that came closest to justifying van Gogh’s
admiring appellation “Millet the Second”. The next in
the series, Harvesters’ Payday was bought for the state and
became the artist’s best-known work. The Harvest, third in
the series, was included with ten charcoal drawings in the Exposition
Nationale in 1883. Lhermitte received the Legion d'honneur in
1884 when he exhibited the fourth monumental composition the Grape
Harvest (New York, Met.).
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Dans La Vallée, 1910
Frye Art Museum, Seattle |
Lhermitte was commissioned in 1886 to do two
large portrait groups to decorate the Sorbonne. The first, Claude
Bernard in his Laboratory at the Colle de France, was shown in
the Salon of 1889. In 1888 Andre Theuriet asked him to illustrate
La Vie Rustique, a major commission for which Lhermitte used the
many drawings of peasant life he had already executed. Lhermitte
was a founding member of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts
in 1890. In 1894 he was made an officer of the Legion d’honneur.
Lhermitte was elected to fill Jacques Henner’s
chair in painting at the Institut in 1905. He continued to exhibit
in the first decades of the 20th century, when he was generally
seen as a relic of a bygone era, although his style later had
an influence on Socialist Realism. Increasingly he worked in pastel,
his draughtsman’s skill ever in evidence, producing some
sensitive portraits and peasant scenes reminiscent of the earlier
and more powerful depictions that van Gogh had cited as “an
ideal”.
