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Frédéric Bazille

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Frédéric Bazille
Self-portrait, 1865–1866, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago
Born
Jean Frédéric Bazille

(1841-12-06)6 December 1841
Montpellier, Hérault, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
Died28 November 1870(1870-11-28) (aged 28)
Beaune-la-Rolande, France
Known forPainting
MovementImpressionism
Signature

Jean Frédéric Bazille (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ fʁedeʁik bazij]; December 6, 1841 – November 28, 1870) was a French Impressionist painter. Many of Bazille's major works are examples of figure painting in which he placed the subject figure within a landscape painted en plein air.[1]

Life and work

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Studio in Rue de La Condamine, 1870, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Among Bazille's friends portrayed are Pierre-Auguste Renoir sitting, and Édouard Manet next to Bazille, who portrays himself painting.[2]

Frédéric Bazille was born in Montpellier, Hérault, Languedoc-Roussillon, France, into a wealthy wine merchant Protestant family. Bazille grew up in the Le Domaine de Méric, a wine-producing estate in Castelnau-le-Lez, near Montpellier, owned by his family.[3] He became interested in painting after seeing some works of Eugène Delacroix. His family agreed to let him study painting, but only if he also studied medicine.[1]

Bazille began studying medicine in 1859, and moved to Paris in 1862 to continue his studies. There he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, was drawn to Impressionist painting, and began taking classes in Charles Gleyre's studio. After failing his medical exam in 1864, he began painting full-time. His close friends included Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Édouard Manet. Bazille was generous with his wealth and helped support his less fortunate associates by giving them space in his studio and materials to use.[1]

Bazille was just twenty-three years old when he painted several of his best-known works, including The Pink Dress (c. 1864, Musée d'Orsay, Paris). This painting combines a portrait-like depiction of Bazille's cousin, Thérèse des Hours, who is seen from behind—and the sunlit landscape at which she gazes.[4] His best-known painting is Family Reunion, painted 1867–1868 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris).

Frédéric Bazille joined a Zouave regiment in August 1870, a month after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. On November 28th of that year he was with his unit at the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande when his commanding officer was injured. That required him to take command and lead an assault on the German position. He was hit twice in the failed attack and died on the battlefield at the age of twenty-eight. His father travelled to the battlefield a few days later to take his body back for burial at Montpellier in the Protestant cemetery over a week later.[5][6]

Personal life

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Bazille never married, claiming it was because of “an early heartbreak with a woman.” He developed intimate friendships with men, such as Edmond Maître, but was also melancholic and claimed to “hav[e] constant migraines while he was painting his nude men.” This and the homoeroticism of his paintings led to modern suggestions that Bazille may have been gay and conflicted about his sexuality.[7][8][9]

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Scholars have said that Bazille was the model for "the engaging figure of Félicien d'Hautecœur" in Émile Zola's novel Le Réve.[10]

Zola took him as the model for Félicien d'Hautecœur in his fairy tale Le Rêve, and the portrait the novelist paints of his hero seems a true likeness of the images of Bazille that have come down to us: "He resembled a magnificent Jesus, with his curly hair, his light beard, his straight—albeit slightly prominent—nose, and his dark eyes, filled with a haughty gentleness."[11]

Main works

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Main article: List of paintings by Frédéric Bazille
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille painting The Heron

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b c "Frédéric Bazille: A Tragic Story". WetCanvas. Archived from the original on July 26, 2010. Retrieved June 20, 2011.
  2. ^ The Art Book. Phaidon Press. 1994. p. 33. ISBN 91-0-056859-7.
  3. ^ "Domaine de Méric – Ville de Montpellier". montpellier.fr. January 8, 2015. Retrieved 2022-07-11.
  4. ^ Rosenblum, 1989, p. 225
  5. ^ Gotlieb, Marc (2016). The Deaths of Henri Regnault. University of Chicago Press. p. 185. ISBN 978-0-226-27604-5.
  6. ^ "Frédéric Bazille and the Birth of Impressionism". www.nga.gov. Retrieved 2018-10-19.
  7. ^ Schjeldahl, Peter (2017-04-10). "Frédéric Bazille's Short Career, Reconsidered". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2025-03-23.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  8. ^ Darnaude, Ignacio (2022-02-22). "Artists Bathing the Gay Away". The Gay & Lesbian Review. Retrieved 2025-03-23.
  9. ^ Broude, Norma. “Outing Impressionism: Homosexuality and Homosocial Bonding in the Work of Caillebotte and Bazille,” in Gustave Caillebotte and the Fashioning of Identity in Impressionist Paris, ed. Norma Broude, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002, 117-165.
  10. ^ Robert J. Niess made this assertion at least twice, on both occasions as an aside and with no supporting evidence; first (as quoted above) in the article "Wagner and Zola Again", PMLA, Sept., 1958, Vol. 73, No. 4, p. 449; and again in his book Zola, Cézanne, and Manet: A Study of L'Oeuvre, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968, p. 56. An earlier assertion (also without evidence) that "Zola portrayed him [Bazille] in Le Rêve" as d'Hautecœur was made by Louis Gillet in Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 20, No. 3 (April 1, 1934), p. 683.
  11. ^ Davray, Raoul. "Frédéric Bazille", La Vie montpelliéraine, June 4, 1927, p. 6. The quoted passage is from Le Réve, chapter IV.

References

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