Frederic Bazillle
 Frederic
Bazille was a French
Impressionist painter whose major works often foreground the
figure within a landscape painted en plein air. Bazille was
an outdoor painter who died too young to fulfill his early promise.
His quiet clear landscapes and harmonious family scenes in muted
colors made him one of the most significant representatives of Early
Impressionism. Frédéric Bazille was born in Montpellier, Hérault,
Languedoc-Roussillon, France, into a wealthy Protestant family. He
became interested in painting after seeing some works of Eugène
Delacroix. His family agreed to let him study painting, but only if
he also studied medicine. Bazille began studying medicine in 1859,
and moved to Paris in 1862 to continue his studies. It was during
these formative years that he met fellow painters
Claude
Monet,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir and
Alfred Sisley, who
would join Bazille in founding the revolutionary Impressionist
movement of the late nineteenth century. Frederic Bazille began
taking classes in Charles Gleyre's studio. After failing his medical
exam in 1864, he began painting full-time. His close friends
included Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and
Édouard Manet. Bazille was generous with his wealth, and helped
support his less fortunate associates by giving them space in his
studio and materials to use. His home in the Batignolles
neighborhood in Paris became a headquarters for the Impressionists;
hence the movement was first called the "Batignolles School."
Bazille's 1870 work The Artist's Studio in the Rue de la
Condamine showing Renoir, journalist and critic Émile Zola, Monet,
Édouard Manet, Bazille, and Edmond Maitre in Bazille's studio
exemplifies this period. |
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 Frederic
Bazille was just twenty-three years old when he painted several of his
best known works, including The Pink Dress (shown here). This
painting combines a portrait-like depiction of Bazille's cousin, Thérèse
des Hours, who is seen from behind—and the sunlit landscape at which she
gazes. In the Forest of Fontainebleau in 1865, when Monet was in bed for
some days with an injured leg, Bazille painted Monet, after his
accident, at the Inn in Chailly. During the following year he was
working on two canvasses which he submitted to the Paris Salon, Young
Girl at the Piano and Still-life of Fish. As he had feared, only the
still-life was accepted. Frederic Bazille's best known painting is
Family Reunion
of 1867–1868 (shown below).Frédéric Bazille's best-known work, Family
Reunion (1867), was a leading example of what is now known as outdoor
figural art. The painting was exhibited at the Salon, France's exclusive
state-run art show, in 1869. Family Reunion showed Bazille's extended
family at their country estate, Méric, and exemplified the artist’s use
of color and adept depiction of human figures, both hallmarks of the
Realist-Impressionist style. The painting was an example of the
challenge that faced all impressionists: how to reconcile traditional
figure painting with an outdoor practice. Bazille was
one of the few people capable of indulging in verbal duels with the
erudite and sarcastic
Edgar Degas, displaying a clarity of mind and matter-of-factness
that were reflected in his work. Beginning in 1866, Frederic Bazille
exhibited at the Salon; he painted numerous portraits of friends and
members of his family in the various studios. In his painting style he
was influenced by both Manet and Courbet. In 1869, his picture
Angler
with Nets caused a fierce debate. |
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 Fredric
Bazille painted outdoors and was interested in the correlation between
flesh tints and landscape tones. Frédéric Bazille's Summer Scene
(Bathers) (1869) transported figure drawings created in his Paris studio
to an outdoor setting that included trees, grass and water. The painting
depicted young men dressed in swimsuits having a leisurely day along the
banks of a river near Méric. Like Family Reunion (shown here), Summer
Scene captured friends and family members in the outdoors and was
exhibited at the Salon in 1870.In 1870, Frédéric Bazille joined the infantry after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). He was almost immediately sent to Algeria for combat training and by the end of the year, he was battling in the frontlines. Frederic Bazille was a painter of great promise but was killed by a sniper during the Franco-Prussian War. Pissarro described Bazille as, "one of the most gifted among us." The work of Jean-Frédéric Bazille poses numerous questions. The brevity of the period in which it was produced and the variety of its genres and styles have often encouraged commentators to ask themselves how he might have developed as an artist if he had not met, with a tragic end in the war of 1870. Frédéric Bazille never married, and his many intimate relationships with men prompted claims that he was gay. At the time, homosexuality was considered deviant and was almost universally repressed, particularly among the social elite in which his family was firmly rooted. His close friendships included the most celebrated Impressionist artists of all time, including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Berthe Morisot. Were it not for his untimely death, Frédéric Bazille was almost certainly destined to become one of the leaders of the Impressionist revolution. |
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