Paintings

Frédéric Bazille’s paintings bring people into close contact with their surroundings: relatives sit beneath a broad canopy of leaves, swimmers move between dark water and bright grass, and painters gather among canvases in a Paris studio. His figures have weight and distinct outlines, even when the landscape beyond them seems to dissolve in sunlight. This combination of bodily presence and outdoor light gives his best pictures their particular character.

The range extends well beyond the familiar group portraits. Landscapes, fish and flowers, intimate portraits, empty studios, a sleeping dog and an unfinished biblical scene all belong to the same short career. The paintings gathered in the National Gallery of Art’s 2017 retrospective make that breadth especially clear: Bazille was testing several kinds of picture together, rather than following a single straight path towards Impressionism. ^[1]

For a first encounter, begin with Family Reunion, Summer Scene and Bazille’s Studio, Rue La Condamine. Then compare their ambitious arrangements with the concentrated looking of Still Life with Fish or the two women-with-peonies compositions. The smaller subjects reveal decisions about colour, surface and space that remain active in the large canvases.

How the paintings develop

Bazille treated studio and countryside as connected working environments. In a letter of 6 January 1865, Bazille wrote, “I must paint a great many figures this winter” — a translation from his French — and explained that this practice would prepare him for spring and summer in the country. Painting from a living model indoors was part of his outdoor ambition. He was building a store of experience in poses, anatomy and the relationships between bodies. ^[3]

This helps explain why his outdoor paintings can feel both immediate and carefully arranged. A cast shadow or bright patch of ground supplies an impression of a particular place, while the figures hold measured positions within it. The Pink Dress, begun in 1864, already sets up this problem. A seated woman turns towards the distant town; her striped dress, dark apron and the stone parapet form a substantial foreground against the lighter architecture beyond. Technical examination shows that Bazille subsequently altered the dress and several parts of the body. Bruno Mottin proposes further work in summer 1865, while distinguishing this later campaign from the painting’s original inception. ^[2]

The resulting surface should therefore be read as accumulated work. Preparatory drawing, changes during painting and later reconsideration all contributed to an apparently quiet scene. In the larger figure groups, a settled appearance similarly depended on adjustments to individual parts. Drawings and sketchbooks provide a useful companion to the canvases because they show Bazille testing arrangements before, and sometimes alongside, work in paint.

The Salon, the official annual exhibition in Paris, gave these experiments a public destination. Still life and figure painting offered different opportunities for recognition. The selection of one work and rejection of another could occur in the same year; a successful submission did not mean that Bazille had resolved his relationship with the jury. The 2016 Musée Fabre retrospective places these ambitions within the exchanges among Bazille, Monet, Renoir and their circle, while showing how strongly his subjects also remained attached to Montpellier and Méric, his family’s estate. ^[4]

Traditional painting remained a living resource within these experiments. In advice to his cousin Louis on 27 April 1869, Bazille expressed admiration for Ingres, Corot, Rousseau and Millet, and a more qualified enthusiasm for Courbet. ^[5] His preferences brought several kinds of painting together. They help explain why a firmly drawn portrait, a broadly handled landscape and a biblical subject could all remain possibilities within his work.

Figures beneath the trees

In Family Reunion, painted and revised across 1867–68, the sitters occupy the shade while the countryside opens brightly behind them. ^[1] Look at the contrast between the deep blue dress and black lace in the left foreground, the pale patterned dress around the central chair, and the smaller figures at right. These large, separately readable shapes hold the group together. The branching canopy spreads over them, but the people retain individual faces, postures and directions of attention.

The foreground objects introduce another rhythm. A hat, parasol and flowers lie below the group, bringing a few small diagonals and irregular shapes into the broad terrace. Most faces acknowledge the viewer, yet the sitters are not all engaged in one shared action. The result allows two kinds of looking: across the assembly as a formal arrangement, and from person to person as a set of portraits. In his 1868 Salon review, Émile Zola valued Bazille’s attention to individual people and their contemporary clothes. His response is useful evidence that the picture’s modernity could be understood through recognisable appearances, without a grand historical subject. ^[6]

The compositional stillness was achieved through revision. Mottin’s account of the radiograph records changes to the uncle, the central woman and the right-hand group, as well as the addition of Bazille’s own likeness. ^[2] Michel Schulman’s catalogue follows the picture’s extended development and its appearance at the 1868 Salon. The family gathering emerged through sustained work across seasons. ^[7]

View of the Village, painted in 1868 and exhibited at the following year’s Salon, narrows the relationship to one seated figure and a distant town. ^[8] Its tall format gives a pine trunk and the shaded young woman considerable foreground presence. The buildings beyond appear densely gathered and full of light. Unlike the sitter in The Pink Dress, this young woman looks towards us. Comparing the two paintings makes a small change in direction feel consequential: one offers the experience of looking out with someone, the other makes us aware of being seen.

The sitter in View of the Village is traditionally described as a tenant farmer’s daughter, but that family identification is not a securely named archival identity. ^[8] The relation between shade and sun, the large foreground figure and the miniature buildings, and the tension between direct gaze and distant space already provide its drama.

Bathers, models and the modern nude

Fisherman with a Net places a standing nude, seen from behind, beside a wooded bank. A second seated figure establishes a different scale farther into the landscape. Painted in 1868, the work was rejected for the 1869 Salon. ^[9] Its net supplies an activity and a tangible object, while the turning body makes the viewer consider back, shoulders, legs and surrounding light together. The nude body belongs to a familiar artistic tradition, while the wooded bank and practical fishing equipment place it in an immediate outdoor setting.

Summer Scene enlarges this investigation into an assembly of eight figures. At the near right, one man reaches towards another as he rises from the water. A swimmer’s head appears at the lower edge; farther back, two men wrestle in the open grass. The tree trunks divide the scene into intervals, allowing several actions to coexist without merging into a single crowd. Bazille developed the composition through preparatory work in Paris and further work in the south; it was accepted for the 1870 Salon. ^[10]

A surviving study now in the Louvre contains seven figures, against eight in the painting. This difference is a particularly clear sign that preparation did not merely copy a finished idea onto a larger support. ^[11] The painting gives active and resting bodies different relationships to light: the distant wrestlers stand in an open patch, while the foreground figures occupy cooler areas near trees and water. Its structure is as important as the sense of an afternoon outdoors.

La Toilette shifts the nude into an interior crowded with patterned fabric, white textiles, a basin and slippers. Three models occupy sharply different positions: one reclines, one stands, and one bends at the foreground. The picture was rejected for the 1870 Salon after an initial report of acceptance proved premature. The Musée d’Orsay’s later exhibition on Black models also brings attention to the distinction between the real people who posed and the roles created for them in paintings. ^[12]

That distinction matters when comparing La Toilette with the two Young Woman with Peonies paintings of 1870. In the Montpellier version, the woman turns towards a vase and raises a stem; in the Washington version she faces us, holding flowers above a basket. Their sequence is disputed, and the model’s personal name has not been established. ^{[13] [14]} Her gesture and gaze alter the relationship between figure and flowers. She is actively arranging or presenting them, giving these pictures a human encounter that a floral still life alone cannot supply.

Studios and the people within them

Bazille painted his workplace as a subject in its own right. In the Rue de Furstenberg interior, paintings crowd the high walls above chairs, a small table and a heater. His January 1865 letter already gives this address, anchoring the room within his early independent working life. ^[3] The Rue Visconti studio has a different shape: bare floorboards stretch past the easel towards a fireplace and bench, with pictures hanging or leaning around them. Schulman dates his use of that studio from July 1866 to late 1867. ^[15]

The rooms show paintings as things that must be stored, placed, examined and lived with. Their edges and frames create rectangles within the larger rectangle of each canvas. The open floor gives those accumulated objects room to register. Some of the pictures within these rooms remain unidentified, leaving their painted arrangements more complete than our knowledge of each object.

The larger Condamine studio enabled a more elaborate statement. In late November 1867 Bazille described renting the space and planning a January move, supporting occupation in early 1868. ^[16] The studio painting belongs to the winter of 1869–70. ^[1] In it, the staircase, high window, stove and piano divide an unusually spacious interior. Several men gather around an easel, while a pianist sits apart at the right. The unoccupied chair in front and the wide bare floor slow our approach to the central exchange.

The display includes Fisherman with a Net, prominent on the left wall. A picture refused by the Salon can thus acquire another public within the painted studio: friends looking, talking and judging. Other picture and sitter identifications remain debated, so the scene is more reliable as an account of artistic association than as a fully labelled group photograph. ^[17] Mottin’s examination indicates that the room was first painted without its people and that figures and the foreground chair were added later. He also treats the traditional account of Manet painting Bazille’s figure cautiously, within a broader argument for limited interventions among friends. His account presents a carefully constructed painting within a culture of shared rooms, models and advice. ^[2]

The portraits make this social world more intimate. In the Portrait of Renoir, dated 1867 by the Musée d’Orsay, the sitter perches on a chair with knees raised and hands gathered across them. ^[18] The Improvised Field Hospital shows the injured Monet in bed in 1865, surrounded by the patterned wall, canopy and small domestic objects of a sickroom. The surrounding furnishings establish a domestic sickroom despite the title’s military association. ^[19]

Edmond Maître, painted in 1869, holds a cigar and a book, his profile and dark suit set against a subdued ground. ^[20] The portrait of Édouard Blau introduces a stronger enclosure of red chair frame and green upholstery. The National Gallery of Art dates it probably 1869 despite its inscription of 1866, so the inscription and probable year of execution supply different evidence. ^[21]

Bazille’s own face appears differently in the Minneapolis self-portrait, which shows a detachable white collar and no palette. The museum dates it 1865–67; Schulman proposes 1867–68. ^{[22] [23]} It is a separate painting from Chicago’s larger self-portrait with palette, dated 1865–66. ^[24] Seeing the two together distinguishes a concentrated study of face and dress from the more explicit presentation of a painter equipped for work.

Landscape from Fontainebleau to the Lez

The landscapes offer their own variety of structure. Landscape at Chailly, associated with Bazille’s 1865 work near Fontainebleau, sets broken stones and scrub beneath a broad sky. ^[25] Forest of Fontainebleau, also dated 1865, feels more enclosed: a dark canopy presses down at the left, and light draws the eye towards an opening beyond the foreground rocks. ^[26] The contrast shows how much depends on the chosen view, even within a related area.

The Beach at Sainte-Adresse changes the proportions. Its long, shallow format was designed as a decorative panel, paired with another scene for Bazille’s uncle. The High Museum’s account relates it to Monet’s example while leaving room for questions about adaptation and execution. ^[27] Shore, sea and streaked sky extend laterally; the boat and tiny figures punctuate that breadth. It would be misleading to assume that such a decorative composition was necessarily painted entirely outdoors.

At Aigues-Mortes, weather was a practical constraint. In late May 1867 Bazille reported only four working outings, several landscapes begun and a larger project requiring further fine days. ^[28] The Western Ramparts spreads the wall across a wide view of water and sky; the reflections are broken into strokes rather than traced as precise inverted outlines. The National Gallery of Art dates the canvas 1867. ^[29] Porte de la Reine, held by the Metropolitan Museum, brings the twin-towered gate much closer. Contemporary figures and animals occupy the grass in front, balancing the monument’s heavy masonry with small, passing activities. ^[30]

Méric offered cultivated spaces as well as open country. In The Little Gardener, a working figure stands among curved beds, lawn, flowers and tall foliage. Helga Kessler Aurisch’s museum essay follows the picture’s development through related studies, showing that the garden was a composition Bazille reconsidered. ^[31] Oleanders invites a different approach through a path and empty green bench. Its lightly stated figure should not automatically be taken as proof that the signed painting was abandoned. ^[32]

Fish, birds, flowers and a sleeping dog

Still Life with Fish was accepted for the Salon of 1866, while Bazille’s composition of people at a piano was rejected. ^[33] Its concentration is striking: a large fish’s golden scales meet a white cloth, a pale elongated fish and the dark basket at the left. The table edge brings the objects close to the viewer. Light distinguishes surfaces that absorb, reflect or break it into small accents. This is a different exercise from a sunlit landscape, but it requires equally exact relationships between neighbouring tones.

Still Life with Heron expands the arrangement vertically. Hanging birds, spread feathers, a gun and white cloth form a dense structure against a dark wall. Musée Fabre dates it 1867. ^[34] Technical examination found a woman behind flowers underneath the visible composition, linking the painting materially to Bazille’s recurring interest in figures and floral arrangements. The connection is evidence of a reused support, rather than proof that every such picture depicts the same model. ^[2]

The two flower paintings often called Flowers and Study of Flowers need careful separation. Potted Flowers, signed 1866, places several plants above a paper-wrapped bouquet. Schulman identifies it as the floral picture accepted alongside Family Reunion at the 1868 Salon, correcting older confusion with the vase-on-console painting. It was given to the Lejosnes and is recorded in a private collection. ^[35] Bazille’s letter anticipating the Salon decision also distinguishes the flowers sent to please their recipients from the Méric family picture whose reception he feared. ^[36]

The Grenoble Vase of Flowers on a Console, dated 1868 by the museum, builds a more elaborate domestic arrangement around an ornate blue-and-white vase, spilling foliage and decorative furnishings. ^[37] Schulman connects the painting with a domestic commission for the Teulon family, a different destination from the Salon flower study. ^[38] Its subject is partly the relation between living plants and made objects: the painted vase, carved furniture and patterned surroundings join the flowers in a surface full of ornament. The potted plants, by contrast, keep their separate containers and varied heights plainly visible.

The Dog Rita Asleep, from around 1864, provides an especially compact comparison. ^[1] The dog curls into a dark shape on a patterned support; a few highlights distinguish collar, body and tucked head. Its tightly gathered body and the surrounding fabric reward the same patient attention to familiar things that the still lifes demand.

Unfinished paintings and the histories beneath them

The late canvases do not settle into one final manner. Ruth and Boaz turns to a biblical subject in a dark landscape, with a crescent moon above the resting figures. Dated 1870 and left unfinished, it brings literary and biblical interests into a body of work often described chiefly through modern life. ^[39] Mottin’s technical account identifies the earlier piano composition beneath it: Bazille inverted and reused the support, which had been rolled and was later restretched at a smaller size. ^[2] A rejected picture could therefore survive materially without surviving as a separately visible canvas.

Young Male Nude Lying on the Grass makes two painting campaigns unusually evident. The reclining body crosses the upper portion, while conspicuous earlier forms remain below. Musée Fabre describes two unfinished compositions on the same support. ^[40] Mottin argues against an older identification of the lower women as a Monet study, finding the technical comparison more consistent with Bazille. His conclusion concerns the materials and handling of these particular layers, whose authorship had previously been disputed. ^[2]

The broad Landscape on the Banks of the Lez, dated 1870 by Minneapolis, gives open ground, trees and sky the space occupied elsewhere by people. ^[41] A small resting dog remains at the bottom right, and a low masonry opening appears among the rough foreground stones. The dog and masonry give the unpeopled landscape signs of animal life and human alteration. Its title also places more emphasis on the river than the visible composition does: the land and trees dominate our experience.

Young Fisherman is another late outdoor subject, traditionally identified as Louis Auriol. Schulman retains the family identification with caution and rejects certainty that this was Bazille’s final painting. ^[42] The Fortune Teller, whose dating varies between the catalogue and the 2017 exhibition checklist, adds a quieter interior: a woman rests her head on one hand above cards spread on a table. ^{[43] [1]} These works leave several artistic directions open: outdoor figure study, intimate interior and large landscape. Their variety resists a neat conclusion around a single last masterpiece.

Collections, survival and the limits of a count

Bazille’s family helped move the paintings from private remembrance into public collections. In 1898 his mother gave View of the Village and Still Life with Heron to Musée Fabre. Michel Hilaire places these gifts at the beginning of the artist’s gradual recovery by museums and historians. ^[44] Family Reunion entered the national collection through purchase with Marc Bazille’s assistance in 1905, while the Condamine studio was among Marc’s 1924 bequests. ^[1] These were different routes into public ownership, rather than one undifferentiated family donation.

Today, Musée Fabre and Musée d’Orsay provide substantial groups through which to explore him. American holdings extend the picture: Washington brings together a landscape and portraits, Minneapolis has the Lez landscape and a self-portrait, Detroit the fish still life, and Harvard Summer Scene. The 2017 retrospective assembled works from these and other collections, allowing pictures usually separated by geography to be studied together. ^[1] A painting’s collection is not a guarantee that it is on display on a particular visit; the individual museum’s current information remains the best guide.

The number of paintings Bazille made depends partly on what is being counted. Schulman’s online indexes contain 284 records: 85 painting records, 40 separate works-on-paper records and 159 album or study records. These are catalogue entries, not 284 separate physical objects. Rectos and versos can share a sheet, albums contain multiple studies, and one record can cover more than one panel. Nor do 85 painting records mean 85 universally accepted Bazille paintings. ^[45]

Two attribution issues make that distinction concrete. After the Bath has historically been attributed to Bazille, but Schulman now questions that attribution; his proposed 1868 date is provisional. ^[46] Another catalogue entry, MSb-47, is retained there as Frédéric Bazille at Saint-Sauveur, whereas the owning Musée Fabre identifies the work as Claude Monet’s Portrait de Bazille, dated 1864. It should be recognised as a disputed catalogue inclusion, rather than counted as an undisputed self-portrait by Bazille. ^{[47] [48]}

Unlocated works, pictures known only through documents, abandoned projects and compositions hidden beneath other paintings also require different treatment. They tell us about Bazille’s ambitions and working habits, but they cannot simply be added together as an inventory of surviving canvases. The Frédéric Bazille introduction offers a shorter route through the artist’s work. For a fuller account of the life surrounding these pictures, see the biography; for their handling of paint, drawing and revision, continue to style and technique.

Browse the paintings

Choose a work to explore its composition, making and history. The groups below offer several routes through the paintings; some works naturally belong to more than one.

Outdoor figures and gardens

• Family Reunion — portraits gathered beneath a spreading canopy.
• Summer Scene (Bathers) — swimming, rest and wrestling beside the water.
• View of the Village — a shaded sitter facing the viewer, with bright buildings beyond.
• The Pink Dress — a seated figure turned towards Castelnau.
• Fisherman with a Net — the standing nude in a wooded landscape.
• The Little Gardener — work among the beds and foliage of Méric.
• Oleanders — a garden path, flowering shrubs and an empty bench.
• Young Fisherman, traditionally called Louis Auriol Fishing — a late study of a figure beside water.

Portraits and Paris studios

• Bazille’s Studio, Rue La Condamine — art, conversation and music in a shared interior.
• Studio in the Rue de Furstenberg — an early room filled with pictures.
• Studio of the Rue Visconti — easel, floorboards and accumulated canvases.
• Portrait of Renoir — a sitter curled into a chair.
• Portrait of Edmond Maître — book, cigar and a concentrated profile.
• Portrait of Édouard Blau — a face enclosed by a red and green chair.
• Self-Portrait — the Minneapolis painting with a detachable collar.
• The Improvised Field Hospital — Monet resting in a domestic sickroom.

Landscapes and coastal views

• Landscape on the Banks of the Lez — open ground, tall trees and a small resting dog.
• Landscape at Chailly — rocks beneath a broad, changing sky.
• Forest of Fontainebleau — an enclosed clearing and distant light.
• The Beach at Sainte-Adresse — a coastal scene in a decorative horizontal format.
• The Western Ramparts at Aigues-Mortes — masonry, water and broken reflections.
• Porte de la Reine at Aigues-Mortes — the monumental gate brought close.

Flowers, still life and animals

• Still Life with Fish — scales, cloth and basket against a dark ground.
• Still Life with Heron — hanging birds and the structure of spread feathers.
• Study of Flowers (Potted Flowers) — plant pots and a paper-wrapped bouquet.
• Flowers (Vase of Flowers on a Console) — an ornate vase in a decorative interior.
• Young Woman with Peonies, Washington — a frontal gaze above a basket of flowers.
• Young Woman with Peonies, Montpellier — a stem raised towards a vase.
• The Dog Rita Asleep — a tightly curled animal on patterned fabric.

Nudes, narrative and unresolved works

• La Toilette — three figures amid patterned textiles.
• Young Male Nude Lying on the Grass — two unfinished compositions on one canvas.
• Ruth and Boaz — a biblical subject beneath a crescent moon.
• The Fortune Teller — a woman looking down at cards.
• After the Bath — a historically attributed work whose authorship is now questioned.