BASTIDE [Provençal bastida, building], an old military word for the fortified towns founded in south-western France in the middle ages, and corresponding to the villes neuves of northern France. They were established by the abbeys, the nobles and the crown, and were intended to serve as defensive posts for sparsely inhabited districts. They were built on a rectangular plan, with a large central square and with streets running at right angles or parallel to one another. A good ex ample is the existing bastide of Monpazier (Dordogne) founded by the English in 1284. Mont-de-Marsan, the oldest of the bas tides, was founded in 1141, and the movement for founding them lasted during the i 2th, 13th and 14th centuries.
JULES (1848-1884), French painter of portraits and rustic subjects, was born in Damvillers, Meuse, France, of good peasant stock on Nov. 1, 1848, and died in Paris on Dec. io, 1884. He went in 1867 to Paris to study under Cabanel, served in the campaign of 187o, and then returned to his Lorraine home, to paint in the open air. He was not the pioneer of the "plein air" school, but his brilliant work gave a great impetus to the movement. The fine portrait of his grand father seated in the orchard of Damvillers, exhibited at the salon of 1874, made him famous. His "Annunciation to the Shepherds" (1878) failed to take the first place in the competition for the Prix de Rome, but one day a wreath of laurel was laid on it by Sarah Bernhardt. His small portrait of Sarah is one of the most famous of his pieces of characterization. The "Hayfield," now in the Luxembourg, exhibited in 1878, created a sensation as great as Millet's "Gleaners" had done. With it may be ranked his "Jeanne d'Arc" (Metropolitan Museum, New York), in which the Maid is represented as a true Lorraine peasant woman in the setting of a Lorraine farm. Among his more famous portraits are those of his friend and biographer A. Theuriet, and of Henry Irving (National Portrait Gallery, London). His studio in Paris was crowded with pupils, among them Marie Bashkirtseff. Be tween the young painter and the enthusiastic girl a great friend ship sprang up. Both were stricken with disease, and both died in the autumn of 1884.
See A. Theuriet, Bastien-Lepage (1885 ; Eng. trans., 1892) ; Marie Bashkirtseff, Journal intime (189o) ; and Richard Muther, The History of Modern Painting (vol. iii.).