Letters and Quotes

Frédéric Bazille's letters bring the practical life of a painter into unusually sharp focus. A promise to work harder sits beside a request for bedding; an exhibition scheme follows disappointment; a landscape depends on the arrival of fine weather. His voice can be affectionate, impatient, funny and fiercely judgemental. Read together, these passages reveal the changing relationship between artistic ambition and the people, places and money that made work possible.

The Musée Fabre preserves a group of letters that includes exchanges with his parents and his cousin Louis. Its exhibition account treats the correspondence as a way into both his everyday circumstances and the artistic world around him. The letters repeatedly explain what he is doing, defend how he spends his time and report how other people have received his paintings. Their addressees matter as much as their most memorable phrases. ^[1]

Reading Bazille in his own words

All English quotations from Bazille below are our translations from the French. Each belongs to a particular letter and occasion. Several dates were supplied by the editors of the museum transcriptions rather than written out in full by Bazille; a month or a season can therefore be more accurate than an apparently exact day. The surviving pages also move rapidly between subjects. A statement about painting may be part of an appeal to a worried parent, while an opinion about another artist may accompany a proposed purchase.

That intimacy is part of their value. Bazille does not write as though explaining a completed career to posterity. He names projects still in progress, predicts outcomes that have yet to occur and announces decisions he may later change. The letters should be read alongside the paintings, with room for the difference between intention and result. A proposed canvas is not necessarily a surviving picture; admiration for another painter does not establish a specific borrowing.

January 1865: reassurance, Monet and winter work

In the letter dated 6 January 1865, Bazille tells his father that he can now be reached at 6 place Furstenberg. He has received his sheets and describes an iron bed, mattress and blankets, with curtains still to come. These domestic particulars establish the circumstances of the better-known passage about Monet: a young painter is getting himself settled and trying to reassure his family that the arrangement will lead to serious work. ^[2]

His mother has allowed him to see that his parents fear he is neglecting both his painting and them. Bazille answers with a concrete daily routine. “Monet takes the trouble to come and wake me every morning,” he writes, followed by “I spend all my days in his studio painting from the living model.” Both quotations describe the situation that winter. They give Monet a role in the discipline of work as well as in artistic companionship. ^[2]

“I must paint a great many figures this winter” is the next essential statement. Its explanation follows immediately: he wants to be ready to make good use of spring and summer in the countryside. Figure practice indoors and painting outdoors belong to the same programme. The living model offers preparation for the more complicated task of making a body convincing within a landscape, where the light, setting and relation of figure to surroundings must all be considered. ^[2]

The letter then returns to his father's support. Bazille promises to “work with all my heart” in gratitude for the sacrifices made for him and to demonstrate greater progress in the coming year. Detached from that setting, the phrase sounds like a general motto. In the letter it is a personal undertaking, with an imagined future moment when his father will judge the results. At the end, Bazille asks for his paintings to be sent from home, together with his parasol and folding outdoor stool. Ambition takes the form of study, transport and equipment. ^[2]

Choosing painting without simplifying the painter

An earlier letter, assigned to mid-July 1864, shows how difficult it could be to make progress visible. Bazille fears another failure in his medical examination and describes a demanding painting that requires repeated alterations. He tells his father that he sometimes undoes the next day what he accomplished the day before. The canvas is not securely identified by this passage. What it records is a process of trial and dissatisfaction, rather than effortless production. ^[3]

By 17 July 1865 he has a more varied set of achievements to report. Alongside paintings, he describes a play written with his friend Blau and a rowing victory at Bougival. He anticipates the objection that these activities are distracting him and insists that painting remains his main occupation. His hopes for the play are still hopes: its completion and a favourable private reading do not establish that the proposed public performance followed. ^[4]

The same letter explains a planned life-size portrait as practice for a portrait of Pauline at Méric. It also records his intention to spend several days at Chailly posing for Monet's large composition. Practice, family portraits and service to a friend's project overlap. Bazille's developing career was made of such exchanges, in which he could be painter, model, collaborator and correspondent. ^[4]

April 1867: “You will see that people will talk about us”

One of Bazille's most forceful declarations occurs in a letter to his mother assigned to April 1867. He has received bad news about his Salon submissions. He answers rejection by questioning the authority of the jury and describing an alternative: about a dozen young artists intend to hire a large studio each year and exhibit as many works as they wish. They would also invite painters they admired to contribute. ^[5]

According to Bazille, Courbet, Corot, Diaz and Daubigny have promised works and support the idea. His confidence rises further when he mentions Monet, whose ability he rates above theirs. Then comes the prediction: “You will see that people will talk about us.” This is a statement of collective ambition, directed to a mother who may need convincing that a rejection does not mean failure. The pronoun matters: the imagined success belongs to a circle. ^[5]

The proposal also has conditions. A petition is seeking an exhibition for rejected works; if that succeeds, the independent venture might wait until the following year. Bazille says a postponement would give him time to make important paintings in Montpellier. The letter therefore contains planning as well as defiance: premises, collaborators, timing and pictures still to be produced. ^[5]

It is tempting to treat this as the first act of the Impressionist exhibitions. It does establish that Bazille and his associates were considering a recurring independent exhibition well before the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874, which took place after his death. It does not establish that the scheme described here happened in its proposed form, or make him a participant in that later event. ^[1]

His declaration that he will submit nothing more to the jury was also a decision made in the heat of this particular disappointment. Subsequent letters show him awaiting Salon decisions again. The tension between independence and the desire for public recognition continued; a private letter catches that tension more faithfully than a seamless story of rebellion would. ^{[5] [6]}

Aigues-Mortes: books, weather and drawing materials

From the Hôtel Saint-Louis at Aigues-Mortes, in a letter assigned to late May 1867, Bazille reports that the weather has allowed him to go out to work only four times. He has begun three or four landscapes and plans a large view of the town walls reflected in water at sunset. Although he expects a simple composition, he reckons that he needs at least eight fine days. The apparent ease of the projected picture depends on a demanding run of suitable conditions. ^[7]

The Western Ramparts at Aigues-Mortes gives a natural point of comparison, with its extended walls, open water and reflections. Yet the letter is a report of work under way, not a final inventory. Its count of projects does not prove that four completed paintings survive. Nor should the sunset plan automatically be treated as a description of every finished Aigues-Mortes view. ^[7]

“I have a great need for books,” he tells his mother. The request accompanies a specific wish for Victor Hugo's account of travels by the Rhine and for copies of Le Figaro. The painter away from Paris wants reading matter as well as landscape subjects. It is evidence of literary appetite, without requiring an invented connection between a particular passage of Hugo and a particular patch of paint. ^[7]

The rest of the letter widens the scene. Bazille gives a sarcastic account of a musical evening at the hotel, arranges a payment towards his Paris rent and asks for very black wood-cased Conté pencils. These are useful companions to the quotation about books. The stay involves aesthetic pleasure and irritation, practical obligations at a distance, and the need for usable materials. Painting in the south does not remove him from either his family network or his Paris expenses. ^[7]

Rooms, models and the price of working

Letters about money prevent a misleadingly easy picture of Bazille as an artist with unlimited resources. In a letter assigned to April 1868, he explains an old restaurant debt to his father, describes arrangements for a loan and worries about the coming rent payment. Elsewhere in that letter he considers his Salon prospects and the need to find a clothed female model for Montpellier. The financial and pictorial questions occupy the same sheet. ^[8]

Space has its price too. In late November 1867 he defends the decision to leave the rue Visconti because he lacks room. He has rented a much larger studio at Batignolles at an additional cost of 200 francs, found a replacement tenant and plans to move in January. This letter places the proposed move at January 1868. It also reveals the calculation behind the expansive room later represented in Bazille's Studio, Rue La Condamine. ^[9]

In mid-February 1869, news of artistic encouragement leads to another account of costs. Bazille reports that visiting painters have praised his pictures, and that Alfred Stevens plans to introduce jury members to his work. At the same time he is short of money because he has paid overdue model fees and continues to employ models almost every day. Praise does not cancel the expense of producing the next picture. ^[10]

The painting he calls the little Italian in this letter is View of the Village, rather than the earlier painting of an Italian street singer. The distinction matters because he is describing the reception of a recent figure-and-landscape experiment. Some visitors prefer it, others the male nude. These are reports of studio discussion before the Salon's verdict, not evidence that the works had already secured public success. ^{[10] [11]}

April 1869: the painters Bazille admired

The letter of 27 April 1869 to his cousin Louis is particularly revealing because it has a practical purpose. Louis wants help buying paintings. Bazille reports unsuccessful attempts to obtain works offered as a Rubens grisaille and a Goya portrait, then sets out his opinions of modern painters. The names and attributions are those of the historical transactions he describes; the letter does not authenticate the auction pictures for a present-day reader. ^[12]

Bazille expresses exceptionally strong admiration for Delacroix. He then writes: “I greatly like Ingres, Corot, Rousseau, Millet, and often Courbet.” The word often matters: he is making a discriminating personal judgement. The passage puts painters with very different approaches beside one another, and his enthusiasm is too broad to fit a simple opposition between tradition and modernity. ^[12]

He admires Corot particularly as a landscape painter, while considering availability and price. He suspects that success has encouraged Troyon to repeat pleasing effects, although he still allows that a work might be worth owning. Cabanel receives a much harsher assessment. Bazille separates tidiness and good intentions from the qualities he seeks in painting. These are forcefully expressed preferences offered to one collector, rather than impartial rankings. ^[12]

Perhaps the most suggestive omission is deliberate. He says that there are two or three young painters, known mainly among other young people, whose talent he greatly likes, but leaves them unnamed. The reader cannot responsibly fill in those names. The passage preserves a distinction between the artistic convictions he holds within his own circle and the advice he is prepared to offer Louis at that moment. ^[12]

Looking at prints and admitting what he knows

Another letter to Louis, headed only Monday and placed by the Musée Fabre in February 1870, concerns old-master prints. Bazille discusses impressions associated with Marcantonio Raimondi and Rembrandt, examining the depth of the blacks, signs of an early impression, ink at the plate edges and the absence of retouching. He explains features he believes indicate the freshness of a copperplate. These are his observations and historical explanations, rather than a modern technical assessment of the individual sheets. ^[13]

He also acknowledges that the beauty of the drawing remains his principal guide, even while he learns about market value. That admission makes the letter especially engaging: he is acquiring specialist knowledge without pretending that it has displaced visual judgement. His list of desired masters includes Dürer, Lucas van Leyden and Mantegna. The correspondence thus records sustained interest in older art alongside his commitment to living painters. ^[13]

The subject here is collecting rather than making prints. The letter shows how closely he could look at works in another medium and how readily questions of artistic quality, physical condition and price entered the same conversation. ^[13]

Friendship and voices beyond the letters

In the letter of 5 April 1869, Bazille reports that Monet is staying with him in severe financial difficulty. Read beside Monet's morning visits in January 1865, this offers a more reciprocal understanding of their relationship: encouragement towards work and the provision of shelter belong to the same history. Elsewhere in the April letter, Bazille punctures the glamour of the Opéra backstage by describing cold rooms, busy stagehands and dancers discussing rents and pets. His account repeatedly notices the ordinary work beneath artistic spectacle. ^[6]

The correspondence also supplies a less public register of artistic friendship. At the end of 1869 Bazille writes from Maître's home, lists a studio interior, Blau's portrait and a female nude among his current projects, and recalls hearing Fidelio with Maître, Renoir and others. Work, music and meals form a connected social world. His list records the winter's tasks; it does not certify that each painting was finished before the year's end. ^[14]

That world is visible in the Condamine studio painting: pictures surround a central exchange by the easel, while a pianist occupies the right side of the room. The correspondence helps us understand the coexistence of looking, discussion and music without requiring every figure in the picture to be identified beyond doubt. The portrait of Edmond Maître offers another route into the friendship, through a more concentrated encounter with a single sitter.

Other people's responses provide a different kind of evidence. Reviewing Family Reunion on 24 May 1868, Émile Zola praised the care given to individual faces and poses and welcomed the depiction of contemporary dress. His judgement explains one reason the painting mattered to an advocate of modern subjects. It remains a particular critic's assessment, rather than a record of unanimous approval. ^[15]

Berthe Morisot's response to View of the Village, in a letter to Edma dated 5 May 1869 and reproduced in the Musée Fabre's exhibition account, identifies a related achievement: placing a figure convincingly outdoors. Her observation helps connect Bazille's winter programme of figure practice with the problem another painter recognised in the finished work. It is Morisot's judgement of Bazille, distinct from his own statements about what he hoped to accomplish. ^[1]

The paintings can also disclose work that no selected quotation adequately describes. Bruno Mottin's laboratory study documents extensive reworking of The Pink Dress and establishes that the Condamine interior initially lacked its figures. Such findings complement letters about perseverance and current projects, while belonging to a different body of evidence. Bazille's words make the effort personal; the surfaces and underlying compositions show how particular pictures changed. Together they allow a fuller encounter with the artist than either a fixed artistic creed or an isolated memorable sentence can provide. ^[16]