Frédéric Bazille
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
painter. Many of Bazille's major works are examples of figure painting
Figure painting
Figure painting is a form of the visual arts in which the artist uses a live model as the subject of a two-dimensional piece of artwork using paint as the medium. The live model can be either nude or partly or fully clothed and the painting is a representation of the full body of the model...
in which Bazille placed the subject figure within a landscape painted en plein air.
Life and work
Frédéric Bazille was born in MontpellierMontpellier
-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....
, Hérault
Hérault
Hérault is a department in the south of France named after the Hérault river.-History:Hérault is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...
, Languedoc-Roussillon
Languedoc-Roussillon
Languedoc-Roussillon is one of the 27 regions of France. It comprises five departments, and borders the other French regions of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Rhône-Alpes, Auvergne, Midi-Pyrénées on the one side, and Spain, Andorra and the Mediterranean sea on the other side.-Geography:The region is...
, France, into a wealthy Protestant family. He became interested in painting after seeing some works of Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
. His family agreed to let him study painting, but only if he also studied medicine.
Bazille began studying medicine in 1859, and moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1862 to continue his studies. There he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
and Alfred Sisley
Alfred Sisley
Alfred Sisley was an Impressionist landscape painter who was born and spent most of his life, in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air...
, 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
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Alfred Sisley
Alfred Sisley
Alfred Sisley was an Impressionist landscape painter who was born and spent most of his life, in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air...
, and Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
. Bazille was generous with his wealth, and helped support his less fortunate associates by giving them space in his studio and materials to use.
Bazille was just twenty-three years old when he painted several of his best known works, including The Pink Dress (ca. 1864, Musée d'Orsay
Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture,...
, 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. His best known painting is Family Reunion of 1867–1868 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris).
Frédéric Bazille joined a Zouave
Zouave
Zouave was the title given to certain light infantry regiments in the French Army, normally serving in French North Africa between 1831 and 1962. The name was also adopted during the 19th century by units in other armies, especially volunteer regiments raised for service in the American Civil War...
regiment in August 1870, a month after the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
. On November 28 of that year he was with his unit at the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande
Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande
The Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande on 28 November 1870 was a battle of the Franco-Prussian War, won by Prussia. In an attempt to relieve the Siege of Paris, French General Crouzat's XX Corps launched an attack against three Prussian brigades resting in Beaune-la-Rolande...
when, his officer having been injured, he took command and led 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 over a week later.
Main works
- La Robe rose, (1864) - 147 x 110 cm, Musée d'OrsayMusée d'OrsayThe Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture,...
, Paris - Atelier de la rue Furstenberg, - 80 x 65 cm, Musée FabreMusée FabreThe Musée Fabre is a museum in the southern French city of Montpellier, capital of the Hérault département.The museum was founded by François-Xavier Fabre, a Montpellier painter, in 1825. Beginning in 2003, the museum underwent a 61.2 million euro renovation, which was completed in January 2007...
, MontpellierMontpellier-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....
- Aigues-MortesAigues-MortesAigues-Mortes is a commune in the Gard department in southern France.The medieval city walls surrounding the city are well preserved.-History:...
, - 46 x 55 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier - Autportrait, (1865) - 109x72 cm, Art Institute of ChicagoArt Institute of ChicagoThe School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
- Réunion de Famille, (1867) - 152 x 230 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
- Le Pécheur à l'épervier, (1868) - 134 x 83 cm, Fondation Rau pour le tiers-monde, ZürichZürichZurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
- Vue de village, (1868) - 130 x 89 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier
- Scène d'étéScène d'étéScène d'été, or Summer Scene, is a famous oil painting by Frédéric Bazille, completed in 1869, a year before his death in 1870. The impressionist painting depicted young men dressed in swimsuits having a leisurely day along the banks of a river near Méric...
, 1869 - 158 x 158 cm, CambridgeCambridge, MassachusettsCambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
- La Toilette, (1870) - 132 x 127 cm., Musée Fabre, Montpellier
- L'Atelier de la rue Condamine, (1870) - 98 x 128.5 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
- Paysage au bord du Lez, (1870) - 137.8 x 202.5 cm, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis