Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt
painting by Jules Bastien-Lepage
Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt is an oil on canvas painting by French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage, from 1879. It portrays the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt, who had a mutual admiration for Bastien-Lepage. It is held in a private collection.
History and description
Bernhardt was an admirer of Bastien-Lepage, at least since his painting l'Annonciation aux Bergers had narrowly lost the Prix de Rome in 1875. When the two met personally, probably in 1878, Bastien-Lepage already had the intention of inviting her to sit for a portrait. At the time, Bernhardt told him about how she put a bouquet of flowers in front of the painting as a sort of tribute. When asked if he remembered the bouquet, Bastien-Lepage answered that he had kept it with him since then.
The sessions where Bernhardt sat for the portrait seem to have been many and tiring, despite its small format; a source claims they were actually forty-five. Bastien-Lepage decided to portray Bernhardt seated, in profile, looking away from the viewer and into a statuette of Orpheus that she holds with both hands. She is dressed very elegantly, in accordance with the fashion of the time, in a dress with silk brocades, and wearing a flamboyant chiffon.
The public source identifies “Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt” as painting by Jules Bastien-Lepage. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Portrait, Sarah and Bernhardt.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q114711502. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1875 and 1878.
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This entry incorporates text from “Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.