Study of Flowers (Potted Flowers)

A bouquet lies on its side at the foot of a crowded assembly of flowering plants. Pale wrapping paper opens around its dark centre, while above it red, white, blue and cream blossoms press towards the edges of the canvas. Frédéric Bazille's Study of Flowers, also known as Potted Flowers, combines the abundance of a cultivated garden with the plain equipment of growing and giving flowers. Signed and dated 1866 at the lower left, it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1868. ^[1]

The distinction between those two dates matters. This was an existing painting, already given to the Lejosne family, when Bazille sent it before the Salon jury. Its public success belonged to a different moment from its making. The modest word study in its exhibition title should not obscure its ambition: at about a metre high, the canvas makes an assortment of pots and a wrapped bouquet into a substantial encounter with colour and material. ^{[1] [2]}

An arrangement built from the ground upwards

The pots give the arrangement its footing. Their curved rims and tapering sides emerge from the lower darkness, anchoring plants whose upper branches overlap almost continuously. Brown earthenware has a different visual weight from the blossoms it supports. The pots stand separately, but the leaves and flowers cross their boundaries; Bazille allows the arrangement to become a dense field without completely losing the identity of its components.

At the upper left a blue-violet mass pushes against the edge. White blossoms occupy the space beside it, and brilliant red flowers spread across the upper right. Lower down, pink and orange clusters balance pale rounded flower heads towards the centre. The eye can follow these colours in more than one direction. A strict central axis would make the display seem ceremonial; here the differing heights and uneven intervals suggest plants gathered together for inspection.

Their setting remains deliberately spare. A dark wall or backdrop closes the upper space, while an earthy brown surface opens below. There is no broad garden prospect to explain where the plants have grown. Instead, the contrast between the background and each coloured cluster makes the flowers themselves carry the spatial information. Leaves disappear into shadow and reappear at their edges; lighter petals advance across that dark scaffolding.

The foreground bouquet interrupts this upward growth. It lies diagonally, with the pale paper separating its dark flowers from the brown surface beneath. The paper's folded edge creates a broad shape that can be grasped at once, unlike the multitude of petals above. Its opening turns towards the viewer, bringing a compact, portable arrangement into the same space as the rooted plants. The painting thus contains two different ways of presenting flowers: standing in their growing containers and gathered for carrying away.

This difference gives the lower part of the canvas unusual importance. Cover the bouquet mentally, and the picture becomes a tall wall of flowering plants. Restore it, and an open interval appears between viewer and pots. The bouquet brings the display forward while the brown ground gives the crowded forms somewhere to stand. The signature occupies that clearer lower strip, where it does not have to compete with the mass of vegetation.

Colour, flowers and the possibility of Méric

Michel Schulman proposes that Bazille painted the arrangement in the greenhouse at Méric, his family's property near Montpellier. It is a plausible setting rather than a documented location for the sitting. The cultivated abundance of Méric also appears in Oleanders and the garden pictures, but this canvas provides no recognisable architectural landmark that would settle the question by itself. ^[1]

The Musée Fabre places Bazille's flower painting within a wider familiarity with cultivated plants, connecting the gardens of Méric with Montpellier's botanical garden near the medical faculty where he had studied. That context helps explain the availability and variety of his subjects. It does not turn the picture into a scientific botanical plate. His principal task here is to make very different plants coexist as painted forms under a common light. ^[3]

The distinction is useful when identifying the flowers. Schulman recounts a contemporary Salon review that named hydrangeas, azaleas and varieties of geranium among the potted plants. Those historical identifications help distinguish the painting from other flower pictures by Bazille. They need not be treated as a complete modern inventory. The wrapped flowers, which Schulman tentatively suggests may be peonies, remain less certain. ^[1]

For looking, the differences of colour and growth are more consequential than an exhaustive list. Small white blossoms make a broken, almost lacy patch; rounded cream and pink heads gather light into larger volumes. Red flowers rise on darker stems, while broad leaves provide pauses between clusters. Bazille moves between a single large petal and a mass of small marks. The resulting surface has variety without requiring every flower to be equally distinct.

The blue-violet flowers at the left are particularly important to the balance. Their cool colour checks the warmth of the red and coral passages. White is equally active: sometimes it forms a bright flower against deep green, elsewhere it belongs to the wrapping paper, spreading into a larger, quieter plane. The painting's richness depends on these differences in the size and placement of colour, as much as on the number of hues.

A gift intended for the Salon

The Lejosnes were the painting's first audience. Schulman's provenance records that it was made for the family, and Bazille's own letter confirms that he had given them the flower painting before sending it to the Salon. In the letter addressed to his father and dated April 1868 by the Musée Fabre's transcription, he explains that he submitted it to please its recipients. He expected the flowers to be accepted, while anticipating rejection for the picture of Méric, the work now known as Family Reunion. ^{[1] [4]}

That private account adds something more precise than a general claim that Bazille painted still lifes to sell. The flower canvas was already a gift. Its submission could gratify its owners and extend its audience beyond their home. The evidence establishes a relationship between giving and exhibiting; it does not establish a price or a formal commercial commission. ^[4]

The letter also preserves the uncertainty of waiting for a jury. Bazille's confidence in the flowers and anxiety about the family portrait were predictions, not reports of a result. Both paintings were accepted in 1868. Their presence together complicates an account of his career in which still life was merely an occasional retreat from more ambitious work: he chose to represent himself publicly through both flowers and a large figure composition. ^[1]

It would be too simple to infer that he considered flowers easy. The very painting that appeared a safer submission demands sustained control of crowded forms, dark foliage and sharply differing colours. His expectations concern the jury's likely response, not a measured comparison of the labour involved. The gift also meant that another household had a stake in the painting's reception.

What the Salon title conceals

At the Salon the picture appeared as Étude de fleurs, or Study of Flowers, catalogue number 147. That general title later encouraged confusion with Vase of Flowers on a Console, the very different composition now in Grenoble. Schulman distinguishes them through a copied list of Bazille's works and a review signed J. Ixe in the Journal de Montpellier on 23 May 1868. The review's potted plants fit this canvas, rather than the large vase and console. ^{[1] [5]}

The copied list, as presented by Schulman, also separates two successive Salon episodes. The rejected submissions of 1867 were the earlier portrait of Edmond Maître and The Terrace at Méric. The accepted submissions of 1868 were the family portrait and the flowers given to Madame Lejosne. The story that Potted Flowers had been substituted for the Maître portrait and rejected in 1867 confuses those events. ^[1]

The correction changes the painting's place in Bazille's career. Its appearance at the Salon was a success after the preceding year's refusals. It also explains why the visible date of 1866 need not agree with the exhibition year. A signature records the painting's dated identity; the exhibition catalogue records a later public appearance. Neither requires moving the canvas's execution to 1868.

The contemporary description fixes what viewers encountered more securely than it establishes a consensus about the painting. Its variety of potted plants supplies a recognisable identity. Acceptance gave Bazille an opportunity to be seen, while leaving open the question of how his painting would be valued.

Flowers among Bazille's friends

Flower painting connected Bazille with the painters around him. The Musée Fabre's exhibition account reproduces Monet's letter from Honfleur of 26 August 1864, in which Monet encouraged him to paint flowers while describing his own competing desire to paint them and the demands of his outdoor studies. The advice makes still life part of their exchange about worthwhile subjects. It was compatible with landscape work, rather than an admission that outdoor painting had failed. ^[3]

Schulman also places Potted Flowers beside Renoir's 1864 greenhouse-plant painting and Monet's still life of that year. These comparisons establish a shared interest, without proving that Bazille copied one particular arrangement. The humble container was itself usable material: plants could be brought together, their heights varied and their colours tested against a restrained setting. ^[1]

The wrapped bouquet introduces another comparison. In its 2016 exhibition account, the Musée Fabre reads it as an allusion to the bouquet in Manet's Olympia. This is a curatorial interpretation of a visible motif. The paper makes the flowers appear transferable, something that can be brought, offered or received. Bazille leaves the human exchange outside the canvas, allowing the bouquet to imply handling without depicting a giver. ^[3]

The paper's painted function is clear even without identifying its source. The pale opening concentrates attention around a dark interior and separates this small arrangement from the surrounding pots. The suggestion of Manet enriches that contrast while leaving the particular circumstances of this bouquet unresolved.

A still life within a varied practice

Set beside Bazille's Still Life with Fish, also dated 1866, Potted Flowers reveals how differently he could organise a still life in the same year. In the fish painting, a white cloth spreads beneath elongated bodies, and a nearly black background enlarges their material presence. Here upright plants occupy much more of the surface, and colour is dispersed among many separate centres. The exhibition checklist places the two works together in the sequence of his early career. ^[2]

The Grenoble Vase of Flowers on a Console offers another contrast. Its ornate vessel, carved furniture and decorative setting make the surrounding objects conspicuous participants. In Potted Flowers, ordinary earthenware largely retreats beneath the foliage. One arrangement presents flowers through an elaborate domestic furnishing; the other builds a display from several plain containers. Their different intended recipients also matter: the console painting belonged to Bazille's relationship with the Teulon family, while this canvas was given to the Lejosnes. ^{[1] [5]}

By 1870, the Montpellier Young Woman with Peonies made the act of arranging flowers visible. A woman raises a stem beside an ornate vase; her attention and hands become part of the subject. The date and identity of that separate canvas are recorded by the Musée Fabre. ^[6] Looking back from it, the absent handler of the 1866 bouquet becomes more noticeable. This is a comparison of pictorial relationships, rather than evidence that Bazille had already planned the later painting.

Technical research provides a further, carefully bounded connection. Bruno Mottin reports that Still Life with Heron was painted over an inverted composition of a woman behind flowers. Discussing Paul Perrin's interpretation, he relates that earlier image to a private study of a young woman and to the floral study. This places flower and figure experiments close together in Bazille's working practice. It does not establish a hidden figure beneath Potted Flowers, or identify one unchanged model across different paintings. The evidence belongs to the canvas examined. ^[7]

From the Lejosnes to later exhibitions

The painting's history extends well beyond its Salon appearance. Schulman's provenance traces it from the Lejosne family, recorded in Pau around 1932, through F. Shöni in Zurich around 1952, to John Hay Whitney's collection in 1960. It subsequently passed through Betsey Cushing Whitney and the Greentree Foundation; the catalogue records a Sotheby's sale in 2004 and a Christie's sale in 2022. These entries establish a succession of collections and sales, rather than an unbroken history of public display. ^[1]

Exhibitions nevertheless brought the privately held picture to wider audiences. It appeared in the Whitney collection exhibition at the Tate in 1960–61 and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1983. It was also included in the Montpellier–Paris–Washington Bazille retrospective of 2016–17. Washington's checklist calls it Potted Flowers or Flower Study, dates it 1866 and lists it as a private-collection loan. An exhibition at the National Gallery therefore should not be mistaken for ownership by that museum. ^{[1] [2]}

Later museum presentations have also widened the way these subjects are understood. The Thyssen-Bornemisza's account of its Impressionist Gardens exhibition placed Bazille and Renoir's flower pictures within the history of bringing the garden indoors. That framework is useful here without requiring this canvas to represent a particular room: its pots preserve the experience of cultivation, while its bouquet turns flowers into a portable arrangement. ^[8]

Schulman records contrasting earlier responses to the painting: John Rewald stressed firmness and contrast despite reservations about the invention of the arrangement, while Gaston Poulain emphasised its departure into brighter colour. In Schulman's account, those judgements draw attention to a productive tension. ^[1] The display is materially ordinary, but its colour is expansive. Bazille makes the pots hold their ground beneath the flowers, and gives the fallen bouquet enough space to change how the whole assembly meets the viewer.