Frédéric Bazille

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Born: 1841

Died: 1870

Summary of Frédéric Bazille

Frédéric Bazille was blessed with perfect timing, but he was also beset by horrible misfortune. With his groundbreaking new style to painting, Degas was part of an exclusive group of radical, iconoclastic painters working in early 1860s Paris that included Manet, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Manet served as a mentor and friend to Bazille alike. Although Bazille had only a limited amount of formal academic artistic training, his intimate associations with other artists, including as sharing studios with Renoir, Sisley, and Monet, contributed to the development of his own style. Despite using Impressionist methods and formal characteristics, his work remained Realist except in terms of subject matter. His paintings were both approved and rejected by the official Salon. Compositional techniques for placing human figures in outdoor situations and combining them with the ambient influences of a specific location were among his first innovations. He spent a lot of time in his studio, but he also favoured painting outside, as Monet had done from the beginning. Bazille had the backing of prominent critics of the day and his career was only getting started when he was killed in action during the Franco-Prussian War, just a few months shy of his 29th birthday.

Despite the fact that he never showed his work with the other Impressionists, Bazille is considered one of the style’s founders. Nearly four years after Bazille’s death, the first Impressionist exhibition took place in 1874, and not a single piece by the artist was on display. The Impressionists such as Monet and Renoir had influenced his work; in fact, his style was closer to that of a Realist than an Impressionist, with elements borrowed from Courbet and Manet’s older pre-Impressionist work.

Monet, a close friend, had persuaded Bazille to leave his studio and paint in the open air. To paint in nature or en plein air, the two artists frequently travelled to the countryside together with the help of other artists. Bazille’s journey into more radical territory as an artist began with his attempts to effectively incorporate the human form into an Impressionist scene. Figures of all kinds, whether naked or fully dressed, recorded the effects of light and other atmospheric phenomena in Bazille’s symmetrical, modernist works. Bazille’s painting style, which could sometimes appear less restrained if not loose and varied like the brushstrokes of the Impressionist style, was much more controlled even though he used modern compositional strategies like unusual cropping that mimicked the cropping of a photograph and vantage points at extreme angles. His paintings have more defined contours, smooth and polished surfaces, and a darker palette than other Impressionists.

Biography of Frédéric Bazille

Childhood

In the south of France, Frédéric Bazille was born Jean-Frédéric into a rich family with old origins. He was born on December 5th, 1841, on his family’s farm, Meric, outside of Montpellier. At the very least, the Bazille ancestors had arrived in the region by the 13th century. In the 18th century, his ancestors included a master arquebusier, “a renowned weapons specialist and producer of luxury works of art … who worked for the king.” With their artisanal talents in goldsmithing, the family built a name for themselves and eventually a wealth. His mother’s jewellery collection included a notably stunning and expensive diamond ring with seven rosette stones, which Daniel Bazille had created in 1720 and ultimately passed down to his mother, Camille Vialars Bazille.

However, Bazille’s father, Gaston, a winemaker and agronomic who became a senator in the Hérault region, was still seemingly liberal enough to give his son some degree of self-determination despite his family’s wealth and influence in the community According to his parents’ records, young Bazille had already determined at an early age that he wanted to be a painter and had informed them of his plans in 1859. The Musée Fabre in Montpellier offered lectures in drawing and painting, and he enrolled in drawing classes taught by local sculptors Joseph and Auguste Baussan, father and son. After studying draughtsmanship and copying under Old Masters like Veronese, he went on to become quite an accomplished artist in his own right. While his father had long supported Bazille’s interest in painting as a pastime, he urged that he obtain a formal education so that he might pursue a more respectable career and be able to support his family. As a result, the young guy decided, though unwillingly, to pursue a career in medicine.

Early Life

Bazille went to Paris in 1862 and enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine there. He graduated in 1866. Instead of studying, he painted in his spare time. He soon abandoned his studies to join the sketching school of artist Charles Gleyre. Art historians still see Gleyre’s historical paintings as the highest form of art because of his reputation as an academic painter. He had taken over Paul Delaroche’s former studio in Paris. Bazille met Monet, Renoir, and Sisley while attending seminars at Gleyre’s studio, all of whom were Gleyre’s most famous pupils. Gleyre’s students seldom stayed long because they disapproved of his academic approach to teaching painting.

As a result of Bazille’s lack of enthusiasm in medicine, he failed his medical test in 1864, and his father grudgingly consented to let him pursue painting full-time. Gleyre and Monet, Sisley, and Manet, three of Bazille’s avant-garde artists pals, had given him plenty of support. In return, he was a kind friend who often supported his fellow struggling artists by giving them money or supplies and studio space.

In 1864, Bazille was 23 years old and just starting his creative career when he created a series of well-received pieces. In the same vein as his fellow avant-garde painters, Bazille loved Paris’ nightlife and frequented the sleazy New Athens district’s cafés, clubs, and bistros (placed between the busy Grands Boulevards and the 9th arrondissement’s Place Pigalle). Cafés like Tortoni, Baudequin, and Guerbois were frequented by Bazille and his friends, who were up-and-coming artists and authors. In the early 1860s, it wasn’t uncommon for Bazille to foot the bill for his financially strapped colleagues like Claude Monet.

Mid Life

It seems like Bazille painted in a frenzy between 1863 and 1870. As soon as he left Gleyre’s workshop, he set up his own business. Some art historians have labelled some of his works as “indirect self-portraits.” indicating that he lived in six different studios throughout the years, three of which are recorded in his paintings. He could afford a nice apartment because of the substantial monthly income he got from his parents. He also shared studio space with other artists as well. They shared the rue de Furstenberg studio in Paris in 1864, and he painted with Monet in the same year. In 1867, he lived on the rue de Visconti alongside Renoir, as well as Sisley and Monet on occasion. When he had money, he’d hire models for the artists to sketch and paint, but when he didn’t, they’d all volunteer to be models for each other. By 1868, Bazille had purchased the Batignolles neighborhood’s spacious studio on rue de la Condamine for himself.

Although Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Cézanne were more well-known (at the time), Bazille also socialised with established painters like Corot and Courbet who had already established careers. He was also friends with academic painters like Henri Fantin-Latour, who depicted a group of anti-establishment artists in his picture A Studio in the Batignolles (1870), which featured Bazille. Aside from that, the young artist was at the very least a distant associate of the contemporary avant-garde literati, such as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, who were influential adjudicators of avant-garde tastes at the time and who also frequented the cafés and bars where Bazille’s artist friends congregated..

There is speculation that Monet and Bazille were close friends, but rumours from the time and testimonies from others in the cultural elite suggest that the artist saw his rich buddy as a “piggy bank.” Despite this, Monet honoured Bazille by appointing him as godfather to his son Jean. As a direct retort to Manet, Monet’s enormous painting Luncheon on the Grass (1865-66) shows Bazille, a young woman in a white dress. Bazille is shown in the artwork in the lower right corner.

Edmond Maitre, a supporter of the arts, was also obviously good friends with Bazille and their relationship lasted until the artist’s death. Music was “sacred.” to both of them, and they were passionate about it. The rumour has it that Bazille had some natural aptitude, perhaps passed down from his mother, a skilled pianist. Young Aesthete was so taken with music that he went to a piano teacher and asked him to “give him lessons in harmony.” During the year 1863, while waiting for the piano to come safely, he addressed his mother in Montpellier, stating, “I am very impatient for my piano to arrive safely and beg you to send me music as soon as you can, my symphonies for four hands, Chopin waltzes, Beethoven sonatas and the Gluck score…” Berlioz, Schumann, and Wagner were among his and Maitre’s favourite composers, though the latter two were relatively unknown in France at the time.

In 1866, Bazille exhibited his work for the first time at the Salon, the official French state exhibition. Girl at the Piano (1865-66), a picture he had high hopes would be approved, was turned down to his dismay. A tiny still life was accepted by the Salon Jury as an alternative. In March of that year, Bazille sent his parents a letter in which he discussed the painting, which Courbet had complimented, and described his anxiety while painting in the radical new manner influenced by Manet and Courbet. In his own words, he said that he couldn’t paint a complex composition, therefore he focused on painting a straightforward topic. As a direct result of the influence of Courbet and more specifically Manet whose work spanned the gap between realism and impressionism, this decision to depict a common topic rather than one that was popular among academics, especially the most popular genre of history painting, was made.

When Bazille learned that his artwork had been rejected, it seems that he repainted over it because he was so angry and hurt by the rejection. Thought to be lost, Girl at a Piano was found hidden under another painting, ironically depicting the biblical storey of Ruth and Boaz (c. 1870). In the past, if an artist was dissatisfied with their work or had run out of money, they would reuse a canvas. Bazille has a history of doing this on a frequent basis, according to reports.

Bazille reportedly spent a lot of time at Meric, his family’s home outside of Montepellier, especially in the winter. He used to go there as a get-away from the city and read or paint. In 1867, he painted La Reunion de family, which is considered by many to be his finest work (The Family Reunion). Bazille, like many of his fellow Impressionists, painted en plein air, or in the great outdoors, and one of his favourite spots to do so was Meric, near Fontainebleau.

“Every spring Monsieur Bazille returns from the South with summer paintings […] full of greenery, sunshine and simple assurance.” art critic Edmond Duranty said in 1870 of Bazille’s output during his winters in the South of France. To portray “the astonishing fullness of light and the unique impression of the outdoors and the power of daylight.” Zacharie Astruc, an artist, painter, sculptor, poet, and art critic, credited Bazille. Bazille’s work was often approved by the Salon Jury, which was painting in a similar manner to that of his close friend Monet. There was no such thing as a Monet.

Late Life

By the year 1870, Bazille’s work had earned him widespread acclaim and respect. Nevertheless, on July 19, 1870, France declared war on Prussia, and destiny intervened. A full-scale invasion of France seemed imminent as the Prussians pushed deeper into French territory later in the summer. The eager young Bazille proceeded to a military recruiting office on August 10th and enrolled in the 3rd Zouaves light infantry unit.

When Bazille’s friends and family learned of his plans to join the Zouaves, they were shocked. When Renoir was asked why his buddy had chosen to join that specific regiment, he reportedly quipped that it was because they didn’t “require shaving.” As one historian has put it, it is possible that Bazille’s hasty decision to join the fighting was influenced by his dissatisfaction at the time; he had stopped painting as prolifically as in the previous ten years and had written, “I have constant migraines; I am deeply discouraged.” shortly before joining up. Upon learning about Bazille’s military service, Maitre wrote to him and said, “My darling, you are the only one I have as a friend. I got your mail, in which you informed me that you just joined up for the programme. Thanks for informing me so recently. You’ve gone completely mad! What made you decide to do this without asking around? I pray that God keeps you safe.” Renoir also sent the following letter to him: “The fact is, you have neither the right nor the responsibility to make such a promise. Merde! “Merde!” exclaimed the crowd.”

After a few weeks of training with the Zouaves in Algeria, Bazille’s regiment returned to France. It affected everyone, with most creative output coming to an end due to the war and siege. Conscripted into the Chasseur regiment, Renoir was forced to return to France to fight at the same time as Bazille, while Monet fled to London to escape military service and Cézanne hid out in the south of France. The National Guard was established in Paris in 1871, and both Manet and Degas later served in it.

The Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande in the Val-de-Loir, approximately 100 kilometres south of Paris, was fought by France in an effort to end the Siege of Paris on November 28, 1870, with Bazille’s regiment taking part. Injuries forced Bazille to assume leadership of the battalion and conduct an attack in which he was twice shot. He was killed in action. The corpse of his grieving father was found at Beaune-la-Rolande a few days later. Bazille, who died at the young age of 28, was laid to rest in the city of Montpellier where she had been born.

Duranty’s fictitious tale “The Painter Louis Martin,” about a visionary artist who died prematurely in the Franco-Prussian War, was published two years after his death, in 1872. Although Duranty gave his character the name “Louis Martin,” it was obvious that the story’s protagonist was mostly based on Bazille. 1860s Paris’s stodgy, academic artistic milieu left the story’s fictitious painter disillusioned. Instead of spending his time at the Louvre copying masterpieces, he followed the lead of artists like Manet and Courbet by painting scenes from his daily life, which the art world considered banal.

Over time, Martin gains the support of other artists who share his dissatisfaction with the yearly Salon and decide to organise their own exhibition in its place. The young Martin’s ambition was cut short when he was murdered fighting for his country. Duranty saw in Bazille “In Duranty’s eyes,” says art historian Diane Pitman, “Bazille seems to have epitomised the vitality that the young Impressionists brought to painting, and his early death underscored the freshness and poignancy of their art.”

Realist painter Bazille is well known for his plein air paintings of people and landscapes, which he created while still in the field. The genre scene depicts a person or group of people resting in a natural environment, and Renoir and Monet helped define it as one of the fundamental themes of Impressionism with their experiments in merging two very conventional motifs, the landscape and the portrait. Using a less academic approach, Bazille anticipates the Impressionist movement with his outdoor landscapes. As such, he is known as a “Proto-Impressionist.” Bazille’s work did not have much of an impact on painters who came after the Impressionists until several of his works emerged at the Universal Exhibition of 1900 in Paris. During a modest retrospective of his work in the Salon d’Automne in 1910, avant-gardes like Pablo Picasso began to take notice because writer and critic Guillaume Apollinaire recognised Bazille’s modernism, including his direct link to Manet and the way the two artists radically reimagined male and female nudeness.

Famous Art by Frédéric Bazille

The Pink Dress

1864

Monet, Renoir, and Morisot, who had become a prominent member of Bazille’s avant-garde group of artists, were influenced by the Realists like Courbet and early Manet, who included current people into their plein air or on-location paintings. In a letter he sent in December 1863, Bazille referred to this technique as “drawing people in the sun.

The Fontainebleau Forest

1865

Monet took Bazille and a few other painters from Gleyre’s workshop to the Fontainebleau Forest in spring 1863 so they could paint there while it was still light enough for en plein air painting. The Barbizon school of landscape painters (c. 1830 to 1870) included artists like Rousseau, Troyon, and Corot, who followed in the footsteps of previous Barbizon school painters like them. Barbizon, a tiny hamlet near Fontainebleau Forest, was the inspiration for the school’s name. Loose brushwork and softer shapes were important features of the Barbizon artists’ style as it developed. Their works had rich colours and natural lighting.

The Improvised Field Hospital (Monet after his Accident at the Inn at Chailly)

1865

Claude Monet is shown in this picture as lying on his back on a bed, his left leg supported up on a blanket folded in half. After their visit to the Fontainebleau Forest, Monet made his way to the nearby village of Chailly, where he met up with Bazille. As a reaction to Manet’s renowned painting of the same title, Claude Monet wanted to start painting Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe (1865-66) and asked Bazille to pose for the image. Monet came first, then Bazille followed a day or two later. He moved into a hotel in Chailly and continued to pose for Monet’s painting while staying there.

The Family Reunion (Family Portrait)

1867-1868

Gaston Bazille, the artist’s father, had a family reunion to celebrate his birthday on August 27, 1867, and this painting recalls that event. There was no sense in the Bazille family members posing for the photo; instead, they seemed startled and shocked, as though looking into the lens of an on-camera flash. In this episode, the action takes place on the family’s estate outside of Montpellier called Meric. The Bazille family has ten members, all of whom sit or stand on the terrace in the shade provided by the big tree. On the terrace, sunlight seeps through the tree’s leaves and illuminates the largely shadowed ground. The strong summer light, on the other hand, highlights the sitters’ clothes, tying the many shades of blue and white to the sky’s deep blue and the scattered clouds that appear to have settled there.

Fisherman with a Net

1868

While the Realists and early Impressionists sought to place the subject in an outdoor environment while also correctly depicting the effects of light and other atmospheric phenomena, Bazille selected the odd subject of a nude fisherman to show his abilities as a figure painter. The practise of depicting naked women in landscape settings is not new; it has been used since the Renaissance. One of the interesting things about it was to get as close to a real-life environment as possible while yet maintaining a realistic connection between the nude body and its surroundings.

Bathers (Summer Scene)

1869

Bathers, also known as Summer Scene, is a painting by Bazille depicting a group of young men in bathing costumes swimming, sunbathing, or wrestling in the background. It’s possible he started the piece at his Paris studio before finishing it in Montpellier, where he drew inspiration from the surrounding scenery and the Lez River. The Renaissance painters Sebastiano del Piombo and Andrea Mantegna are among the sources for the men’s figures. Manette Salomon (1867), a contemporaneous book by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, is a probable literary source since it describes in great detail a brilliantly lighted scene of young male bathers.

The Toilette

1869-1870

In order to submit The Toilette to the 1870 Salon, Bazille painted Bazille’s Studio (1870) while also working on this picture. This unfinished painting, which is smaller than most of his other works and sits on the far wall of the studio over the tiny white couch, may be seen in the studio painting. In a letter to his mother, written in January 1870, he described the work in progress. In the letter, he first expresses his doubts about Summer Scene being accepted by the Salon Jury before going on to describe The Toilette: “I’m currently working on another [painting] that I believe will be well received, but it’s proving to be incredibly challenging. These three ladies are either completely or almost naked. I’ve discovered a stunning model, but she’ll set me back a pretty penny: 10 francs a day, not including her mother’s bus ticket.”

Bazille’s Studio

1870

Of the three studio scenes Bazille painted, this is the most well-known. Although it’s a later painting, this massive canvas is much more Realist in style than Impressionist. Impressionist-style paintings that Bazille has painted en plein air utilise his Impressionist methods including loose brushwork, softened edges, and light-infused tonalism. These are some of his most experimental and avant-garde works.

BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)

Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver

• Frédéric Bazille was blessed with perfect timing, but he was also beset by horrible misfortune.
• With his groundbreaking new style to painting, Degas was part of an exclusive group of radical, iconoclastic painters working in early 1860s Paris that included Manet, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
• Manet served as a mentor and friend to Bazille alike.
• Although Bazille had only a limited amount of formal academic artistic training, his intimate associations with other artists, including as sharing studios with Renoir, Sisley, and Monet, contributed to the development of his own style.
• Despite using Impressionist methods and formal characteristics, his work remained Realist except in terms of subject matter.
• His paintings were both approved and rejected by the official Salon.
• Compositional techniques for placing human figures in outdoor situations and combining them with the ambient influences of a specific location were among his first innovations.
• He spent a lot of time in his studio, but he also favoured painting outside, as Monet had done from the beginning.
• Bazille had the backing of prominent critics of the day and his career was only getting started when he was killed in action during the Franco-Prussian War, just a few months shy of his 29th birthday.
• Despite the fact that he never showed his work with the other Impressionists, Bazille is considered one of the style’s founders.
• Nearly four years after Bazille’s death, the first Impressionist exhibition took place in 1874, and not a single piece by the artist was on display.
• The Impressionists such as Monet and Renoir had influenced his work; in fact, his style was closer to that of a Realist than an Impressionist, with elements borrowed from Courbet and Manet’s older pre-Impressionist work.
• Monet, a close friend, had persuaded Bazille to leave his studio and paint in the open air.
• To paint in nature or en plein air, the two artists frequently travelled to the countryside together with the help of other artists.
• Bazille’s journey into more radical territory as an artist began with his attempts to effectively incorporate the human form into an Impressionist scene.
• Figures of all kinds, whether naked or fully dressed, recorded the effects of light and other atmospheric phenomena in Bazille’s symmetrical, modernist works.
• Bazille’s painting style, which could sometimes appear less restrained if not loose and varied like the brushstrokes of the Impressionist style, was much more controlled even though he used modern compositional strategies like unusual cropping that mimicked the cropping of a photograph and vantage points at extreme angles.
• His paintings have more defined contours, smooth and polished surfaces, and a darker palette than other Impressionists.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.

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