Frederic Bazille
(December 6, 1841 - November 28, 1870) |
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Art Work
| Name: |
Frederic Bazille |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Montpellier |
| Nationality: |
French |
| Birth: |
December 6, 1841 |
| Death: |
November 28, 1870 |
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| Past Auctions: |
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Quick Facts
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Painter |
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Biography
| The son of a senator, he was born into the wealthy Protestant middle class in Montpellier. He soon came into contact with the contemporary and still controversial painting of Eugene Delacroix and Gustave Courbet through the Montpellier collector, Alfred Bruyas. In response to his familys wishes he began to study medicine in 1860. He moved to Paris in 1862 and devoted his time increasingly to painting. In November 1862 he entered the studio of Charles Gleyre where he produced academic life drawings (examples in Montpellier, Mus. Fabre) and made friends with the future Impressionists, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. When the studio closed in 1863, he did not look for another teacher but followed his friends to Chailly, near the forest of Fontainebleau, where he made studies from nature . From 1863 he took an active part in Parisian musical life, attending the Pasdeloup and Conservatoire concerts. He developed a passion for opera (Berlioz and Wagner in particular) and German music (Beethoven and Schumann). He attended the salon of his cousins, the Lejosne family, where Henri Fantin-Latour, Charles Baudelaire, Edmond Maitre, Renoir and Edouard Manet were frequent guests, and at the end of 1863 he met Courbet.Bazilles earliest paintings are either lost or destroyed. A canvas painted at Saint-Sauveur in 1863 reveals his affinity with the Provencal school, especially Paul Guigou, in the definition of masses and simplification of forms and colours. The same intensity is found in a Reclining Nude (1864; Montpellier, Mus. Fabre), the composition of which is taken from a painting by Guido Cagnacci, while the pose is modelled on one of Gleyres bacchantes. In the course of his travels with Monet in Normandy during the summer of 1864, he visited Honfleur, an important site for plein-air painting before Impressionism, in the company of Eugene Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind. However, his Small Farmyard shows the influence of the Barbizon school in its drab colours and austere subject. The same tonal simplicity occurs in the Studio in the Rue de Furstemberg (Montpellier, Mus. Fabre). In 1865 he returned to Chailly with Monet and posed for his Dejeuner sur lherbe (Paris, Mus. dOrsay). After this he painted Landscape at Chailly (1865; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.), which closely followed the stylistic direction then being taken by Sisley and Monet, and the Improvised Sickbed (1865; Paris, Mus. dOrsay), showing Monet resting after a leg injury. The realist emphasis, the austere and subtle colouring and the apparent disorder of these works are at odds with his more ordered landscapes of the Midi, such as the Pink Dress (1865; Paris, Mus. dOrsay), which he produced soon afterwards.The friendship that linked Bazille and the future Impressionists and their common artistic researches took concrete form in his series of views of the Paris studios in which he recorded the gatherings of his friends and combined their works with his own: for example Rue de Furstemberg and Studio in the Rue de la Condamine (1870; Paris, Mus. dOrsay); in the series of still-lifes with a heron by Bazille and Sisley (1867; Montpellier, Mus. Fabre); and in the portrait of Bazille by Renoir (1867; Paris, Mus. dOrsay). His tastes and friendships are further emphasized in a series of portraits including Edmond Maitre (1869; Washington, DC, N.G.A.).Apart from landscapes of the Languedoc countryside such as the Walls of Aigues-Mortes (1867; Montpellier, Mus. Fabre), Bazille concentrated almost exclusively on painting the figure. After Young Girl at the Piano, he generally preferred to depict family scenes involving several figures, which he sketched at Meric during the summer and completed in Paris. Bazilles handling of multi-figure compositions, which he had learnt from Courbet, Manet and Monet, was essentially traditional. The Terrace at Meric and the Family Reunion (exh. Salon 1868; Paris, Mus. dOrsay) show his progressive integration of the figure into the landscape as well as his attempts to arrange the still rather stiff figures with greater coherence and naturalism. The constant search for balanced composition led him to simplify forms and give priority to light colours. The View of a Village (1868; Montpellier, Mus. Fabre) exploits the light of the Midi to separate planes in a homogeneous and spontaneous pictorial structure, which recurs with a more monumental aspect in the latent energy of the Fisherman with Net (Zurich, Rau Found.) and Summer Scene, Bathers (1869; Cambridge, MA, Fogg). While the rural scenes combine academic attitudes and traditional technique with the dazzling limpidity of the landscapes of the Provencal school, in his urban paintings Bazille depicted contemporary activities in an austere palette and carefully structured brushwork (Little Italian Street Singer and The Cardsharp, both 1869; priv. cols).After painting the still-life Flowers (1868; Grenoble, Mus. Peint. & Sculpt.), Bazille combined luxuriant composition with a sensuous model in The Toilet and the Negress with Peonies (both 1870; Montpellier, Mus. Fabre). These pictures recalled Manets Olympia (1863; Paris, Mus. dOrsay) as well as Fantin-Latour and Courbet, transformed by a bright, even light that intensified rather than dissolved forms. Bazille had first experimented with the studio exoticism found in these works in the shimmering costume of Moorish Woman (1869; Pasadena, CA, Norton Simon Mus.). His last painting, Ruth and Boaz, was taken from a passage in Victor Hugos La Legende des siecles. Bazille included a familiar landscape in the background but departed from naturalism by introducing monumental figures of restrained energy, which were close in spirit to Puvis de Chavannes and Paul Cezanne. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War he enlisted in a Zouave regiment on 10 August 1870 and was killed at Beaune-la-Rolande, near Orleans, the following November.Because of his early death, Bazille will always be judged in the light of his friendships with the future Impressionists. He bought Monets Woman in a Garden (c. 1866-7; Paris, Mus. dOrsay) in 1868 and provided important financial support for both Monet and Renoir. Yet while he is justly considered to be a precursor of Impressionism by virtue of his plein-air work and the dynamism of the forms and bright colours he employed, his classical understanding of space in terms of graduated planes and the sensuality of his subject-matter also link him with the earlier painters he admired, most notably the Venetian Old Masters, Delacroix and Courbet. |
Samples of Work
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