Bazille was an early French Impressionist painter who came from a well to do family. While studying under Gleyre he met Renoir. Bazille would later share his studio with Monet and Renoir. He painted outdoors and was interested in the correlation between flesh tints and landscape tones. He was a painter of great promise but was killed by a sniper during the Franco-Prussian War. Pissarro described Bazille as, "one of the most gifted among us."
The work of Jean-Frédéric Bazille poses numerous questions. The
brevity of the period in which it was produced and the variety of
its genres and styles have often encouraged commentators to ask
themselves how he might have developed as an artist if he had not
met, with a tragic end in the war of 1870. The question is as
legitimate as it is futile, for all responses to it must be
conjectural, and cannot but be influenced by the enthusiasm of those
who have studied this painter's moving and complex body of work.
Bazille can be classified as an Impressionist only with the wisdom accorded by hindsight, because of his association with
those painters, particularly Monet and Renoir, who were his youthful companions, and who sometimes painted
the same subjects as he. At the time of Bazille's death,
these artists, steeped in the example of Courbet, would have been perfectly willing to classify themselves as Realists.
And a Realist is what Bazille was, if we are
to judge from the subjects he frequently
chose to depict: his own family, familiar views of the countryside around Montpellier, and still lifes, or austere studio interiors proclaiming their author's love for his art. This
was limited repertory, deploying its modernity within the most established pictorial tradition and, in its banality, defiantly rejecting the anecdotal painting so beloved of the Salon jury.
The following is an excerpt from Frédéric Bazille by Pascal Bonafoux:
During the summer, Bazille asked Renoir to finish setting up the new studio. From
Voisins-Louveciennes, Renoir responded: "if you want me to do as you ask and if you
have money, you would do well to send me some quickly, if only so you don't spend it
all. You can count on me, seeing as I have neither wife nor child, and as I'm not about
to have either the one or the other. Send me a note, so I'll know if I need to begin work
on the renovations immediately, which would annoy me greatly, first of all because I'm
working, then because I don't have resources to keep myself fed in Paris, while here I
manage quite well. I'll write to you at greater length another time, for I'm hungry, and
brill in white sauce is sitting in front of me. I'm not paying the postage, I only have
twelve sous in my pocket, and that's to pay my way to Paris when I need'to go." In the
summer of 1869, Renoir wasn't the only one who didn't pay postage, leaving that to
Bazille. August 9, Monet to Bazille: "Dear friend, would you like to know what my
circumstances have been and how I've been living during the eight days I've been waiting
for your letter? Then ask Renoir, who brings us bread from his house so we won't
starve." August 17: "1 have to think that what I tell you about my circumstances scarcely
concerns you, because I tell you we're starving." August 25: "If I don't get some help,
we1l die of hunger. I can't paint, as I hardly have any paints left-, otherwise I'd be work-
ing. Just see what I must be suffering and try to help me out!" September 25: "1 sold a
still life and I've been able to work a bit. But as always happens, I've had to stop for 45
lack of paints.... That makes me furious with everyone, I'm jealous, vicious, I'm fuming;
if only I could work everything would be all right.... I have a dream, a painting, the
baths at la Grenouillere, for which I've made a few poor sketches, but it's a dream.
Renoir, who's come to spend two months here, also wants to make this painting." The
Grenouillere paintings were made. And at the same time, Renoir wrote to Bazille: "I'm
waiting for your masterpieces. I expect to savage them unmercifully when they arrive.
I've seen no one. I'm at my parents' and almost always at Monet's, where, between
parenthesis, they can't hold out much longer. We don't eat every day Still, I'm pretty
content, because for painting Monet is good company. I'm not doing very much because
I don't have a lot of paints."
Bazille was an early French Impressionist painter who came from a well to do family. While studying under Gleyre he met Renoir. Bazille would later share his studio with Monet and Renoir. He painted outdoors and was interested in the correlation between flesh tints and landscape tones. He was a painter of great promise but was killed by a sniper during the Franco-Prussian War. Pissarro described Bazille as, "one of the most gifted among us."
