Portrait of Édouard Blau

Édouard Blau sits close to the picture’s surface, his head turned slightly aside and his black clothes spreading towards the lower corners. Behind him, green upholstery and a bright reddish wooden curve make the chair almost as forceful a presence as the sitter. Frédéric Bazille’s oil on canvas belongs to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which dates it probably 1869, despite the inscription reading 1866. It measures 59.5 × 43.2 cm. ^[1]

Blau was a writer whose career would become closely associated with French opera. Yet Bazille gives him no manuscript, score or theatrical accessory. The portrait asks us to look at the arrangement of a head, a clothed body and a chair before learning the sitter’s profession. Its historical interest emerges when that concentrated image is brought together with letters describing a friendship sustained by writing, performance and the ordinary pleasures of Parisian artistic life.

A writer within Bazille’s circle

Born in 1836, Blau worked in the offices of the Assistance publique, where he befriended Louis Gallet, while pursuing journalism, fiction, poetry and theatre. In 1868 the two writers won a competition for the libretto of La Coupe du roi de Thulé, subsequently set by Eugène Diaz. Blau later collaborated on the texts of Massenet’s Le Cid and Werther, and wrote the libretto of Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys. These achievements situate him within an overlapping world of literary and musical collaboration. ^[2]

Bazille knew him well before that later operatic reputation. In the letter to his father dated 17 July 1865 by the Musée Fabre, he reports that he and Blau had begun a play during the winter. They had spent a month’s evenings finishing it, and a reading to friends, including two dramatists, had encouraged them. Bazille was seeking further advice and hoped to submit the piece to the actress Déjazet. His imagined performance and earnings remained hopes; the letter establishes the collaboration, without proving that the play reached the stage. ^[3]

Blau was someone with whom Bazille had already undertaken sustained creative work. The painter’s evenings could involve the drafting and testing of dramatic dialogue alongside his daytime painting. Their friendship consequently belongs to a broader artistic life than a list of painters exchanging studio visits would suggest.

That same letter is lively about competing activities. Bazille discusses paintings in progress, a planned portrait at Méric, the shared play and a rowing victory at Bougival. He anticipates his father’s concern that he is doing too many things, and reassures him that painting remains his central occupation. Writing with Blau appears as one of the pursuits he enjoys around that commitment. ^[3]

The head within the chair

The portrait’s format gives Blau little surrounding room. His shoulders extend across most of the width, and the dark clothing continues beyond the bottom edge. No hands appear to explain what he is doing. The chair supports the head visually as well as physically: the green back forms a coloured field immediately around the face, with the reddish frame describing a larger curve behind the hair.

His body is presented broadly towards us, but the head and eyes turn towards our right. The adjustment is small enough that both eyes remain clearly visible. It creates an encounter in which the sitter is available to close scrutiny while his attention points beyond the canvas. The picture leaves the object of that attention unstated.

Look at the unequal shapes on either side of his face. On our left, the exposed ear and dark side of the head interrupt a substantial area of green. On our right, the face approaches the chair’s outer curve more closely, and the frame runs out of the picture. The sitter’s position is therefore less symmetrical than the broad frontal body initially suggests. This slight displacement keeps the enclosing chair from becoming a decorative halo.

The features are firmly set out. Dark marks beneath the brows sharpen the eyes; the nose is built from warm and cool changes of tone, with a small bright accent near its tip. The lighter skin across the forehead broadens into a continuous plane beneath the irregular hairline. Around the mouth, the moustache supplies a different kind of line, curling away from the lips and extending the face sideways. These varied edges make the face legible without requiring a sharply drawn outline everywhere.

There is an apparent reserve to the pose, but the painting cannot tell us that Blau was habitually reserved, distressed or absorbed in a particular thought. The visible evidence is more precise: closed lips, eyes directed away, an upright head and no gesturing hands. Those choices organise the viewer’s experience of the portrait. They do not establish the sitter’s private emotional state.

Dark clothes, strong colour

The black suit occupies a large part of the canvas, but its surface contains several distinct shapes. Long lapels run downwards around the waistcoat; flatter areas give way to diagonal folds and the rounded movement of a sleeve. A small light button near the lower centre provides a sharp interruption. Above it, a narrow glimpse of pale shirt prevents the waistcoat from becoming an entirely closed black mass.

The collar is especially effective. Its two pale points sit beneath the chin, with the dark neckwear between them. They make a compact arrangement of light and dark that carries the eye from the face into the clothing. Their cool white also sets off the warmer pinks and ochres of the skin. Bazille makes formal dress useful to the painting: it supplies contrasting shapes and surfaces as well as identifying an aspect of Blau’s appearance.

The chair brings stronger colour into this subdued setting. Deep green brushwork varies across the upholstery, while the red frame catches pale, almost silvery highlights along its upper curve. The face occupies the meeting point of these surrounding colours. The red does not spread evenly across the canvas, and the green remains concentrated behind the head and shoulders; that restriction gives both more force.

Above the sitter, the background opens into a dark field crossed by loose, slanting strokes. The space is not described as a furnished room. Its visible movement contrasts with the more carefully articulated face. The hair supplies another transition: broad dark waves take up the freedom of the background while remaining firmly attached to the head’s structure. These differences in handling are visible features of the surface; they do not by themselves establish how many sittings the portrait required.

Schulman places Blau alongside The Fortune Teller and Young Woman with Lowered Eyes, drawing attention to their controlled contours, illuminated faces and restrained surrounding tones. That comparison usefully reminds us that Bazille’s late figure painting includes concentrated indoor images as well as ambitious outdoor compositions. ^[4]

Why the date remains uncertain

The inscription in the upper-left corner reads 1866. The National Gallery nevertheless assigns the painting to probably 1869, and its retrospective checklist proposed the still more specific date of probably December 1869. The distinction is between what is written on the canvas and the date proposed for its execution; both deserve to remain visible. ^{[1] [5]}

There is substantial documentary support for work on a Blau portrait at the later date. In a letter assigned by the Musée Fabre to late 1869, Bazille lists three current projects: his studio interior, the portrait of Blau and a female nude intended for the Salon. He expects these to occupy the winter. The letter establishes a portrait project in progress, not necessarily its completion before the year ended. It also does not explain why the surviving painting carries the earlier inscription. ^[6]

Schulman also cites a February 1869 letter in which Blau apologises for a failed arrangement and offers his availability for another meeting; he connects it with the portrait project. Read as an indication of plans between painter and sitter, it adds context, but the later work list is more explicit about the painting itself. Schulman’s catalogue adopts 1869, although its inscription field conflicts with both its own discussion and the National Gallery’s reading of 1866. ^[4]

The earlier date on the canvas cannot be dismissed on the assumption that the men met only in 1869. Their joint play is documented four years before then. What remains uncertain is the painting’s chronology, not whether an earlier friendship was possible. The most useful designation is therefore the museum’s qualified one: probably 1869, with an inscription dated 1866. ^{[3] [1]}

Theatre and music around the portrait

Theatrical interests continued after the joint play. Schulman places Blau and Bazille together in the preparations for a performance of Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas at the Lejosnes’ home in March 1869. This was a social setting in which literary performance and friendship overlapped, rather than an occasion that establishes their first acquaintance. ^[4]

Music also runs through the letter listing the portrait. Bazille writes from Maître’s home and describes an outing with Maître, Renoir and others to hear Fidelio, followed by a meal. He also remembers a woodcock cooked at Maître’s. The small details matter because they place the painting among actual activities and relationships. They bring the winter work list into the same letter as an evening at the opera and shared food, without turning either episode into a scene supposedly witnessed during Blau’s sitting. ^[6]

The Musée Fabre’s retrospective account describes Bazille as an experienced pianist and an enthusiastic listener to Mozart and the Romantic composers. Music was part of the culture in which he worked and socialised. ^[7] Blau’s developing career gives that culture a further dimension: one of Bazille’s friends would make words for musical performance his principal occupation. ^[2] The portrait preserves the person within that network while leaving his profession visually unannounced.

Other portraits, another use of the chair

The Portrait of Edmond Maître makes a particularly useful companion. Maître turns much farther into profile, with an open book below and a cigar held away from his body. His hands extend the portrait into a small field of activity. Blau’s tighter framing removes that field: head, collar, torso and chair carry the whole encounter. The paintings offer different ways of making a friend present, even though both use dark contemporary clothing against a subdued ground.

The Portrait of Renoir introduces a more visibly folded pose, with raised knees and arms gathered across them. In comparison, Blau’s shoulders and enclosing chair produce a compact, upright arrangement. These differences reward looking across Bazille’s portraits without making each pose an explanation of an entire personality.

Schulman identifies Blau’s chair with the armchair displayed prominently in Bazille’s Studio, Rue La Condamine. Their curving reddish frames and green upholstery invite comparison, although the studio chair has a red back and green seat, whereas green fills the visible back behind Blau. The visual relationship is clear; the exact furniture identification deserves caution. ^[4]

The comparison also reveals two different pictorial functions. In the portrait, furniture encloses a sitter. In the studio picture, the empty chair stands out on the open floor, bringing saturated colour forward while people gather farther back. Mottin’s technical account reports that the figures and the chair were added after the room had first been painted. That finding concerns the construction of the studio picture; it gives no equivalent sequence for Blau’s portrait. ^[8]

From a private collection to Washington

The National Gallery records a sale from Leicester Galleries in London to Chester Dale on 20 April 1927, followed by Dale’s bequest to the museum in 1963. This is the documented acquisition date, rather than the 1920 given in Schulman’s provenance. ^{[1] [4]}

The painting appeared in the National Gallery’s 1965 presentation of the Chester Dale Bequest. It later joined the Washington stage of the 2016–17 Bazille retrospective, where it was catalogue number 55; it was not shown at the Montpellier and Paris stages. ^[1] The retrospective’s placement of Blau among the portraits and late figure pictures helps restore the breadth of Bazille’s subjects. ^[5]

Blau’s profession and the letters deepen the portrait, but its strongest effects remain available before we know that history. The curved chair directs attention towards the face; the white collar gives the dark body a precise upper boundary; the eyes carry attention away from the viewer. Bazille makes a recognisable social presence from those few elements. The documentary record then reveals how much shared activity stands behind the apparently quiet act of sitting.