Background
Frédéric Bazille was born in Montpellier, Hérault, Languedoc-Roussillon, France on December 6, 1841. Bazille was raised in a wealthy family in the South of France.
Frédéric Bazille was born in Montpellier, Hérault, Languedoc-Roussillon, France on December 6, 1841. Bazille was raised in a wealthy family in the South of France.
He left home in the early 1860s to study medicine in Paris. But his passion for painting overcame the obligation he felt to pursue a proper vocation and, much to his parents' chagrin, he soon left school to pursue art. It was during these formative years that he met fellow painters Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, who would join Bazille in founding the revolutionary Impressionist movement of the late 19th century.
Thanks to his family's wealth, Frédéric Bazille had a more spacious apartment and studio than most of his artist friends and even supported some of them early in their careers, including Monet and Renoir. His home in the Batignolles neighborhood in Paris became a headquarters for the Impressionists; hence the movement was first called the "Batignolles School." Bazille's 1870 work The Artist's Studio in the Rue de la Condamine showing Renoir, journalist and critic mile Zola, Monet, douard Manet, Bazille, and Edmond Maitre in Bazille's studio exemplifies this period.
Frédéric Bazille's best-known work, Family Reunion (1867), was a leading example of what is now known as outdoor figural art. The painting was exhibited at the Salon, France's exclusive state-run art show, in 1869. Family Reunion showed Bazille's extended family at their country estate, Méric, and exemplified the artist's use of color and adept depiction of human figures, both hallmarks of the Realist-Impressionist style. The painting was an example of the challenge that faced all Impressionists: how to reconcile traditional figure painting with an outdoor practice.
Frédéric Bazille's Summer Scene (Bathers) (1869) transported figure drawings created in his Paris studio to an outdoor setting that included trees, grass and water. The painting depicted young men dressed in swimsuits having a leisurely day along the banks of a river near Méric. Like Family Reunion, Summer Scene captured friends and family members in the outdoors and was exhibited at the Salon in 1870.
In 1870, Frédéric Bazille joined the infantry after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He was almost immediately sent to Algeria for combat training and by the end of the year, he was battling in the frontlines. Frédéric Bazille was tragically killed in action in his first battle, on November 28, 1870, at age 29.
Study of Flowers
The Terrace at Méric (Oleander)
Portrait of Alphonse Tissie
Flowers
The Dog Rita Asleep
Self-Portrait
Grape Picker in a Cap
Landscape at Chailly
Portrait of Auguste Renoir
Louis Auriol Fishing
Saint-Saveur
Man with a Pipe
Landscape on the Shore of Lez
The Fortune Teller
Young Woman with Lowered Eyes
Landscape of Aigues-Mortes
The Fisherman with a Net
Port of the Queen at Aigues-Mortes
The Artist's Studio, Rue de la Condamine
Manet and His Easel
Dried Fish
The Improvised Field-Hospital
Still Life with Fish
The Little Gardener
Self-Portrait
Woman in Moorish Costume
Beach at Sainte-Adresse
Grape Picker in a Yellow Hat
Studio of The Rue Visconti
Toilet
Portrait of Edmond Maitre
Grape Picker in a Cap I
Forest of Fontainebleau
Bathers (Summer Scene)
The Heron
Soup Bowl Covers
Reclining Nude
Family Reunion
Portrait of Édouard Blau
Village Street
The Pink Dress
After the Bath
Self-Portrait at Saint-Saveur
Negress with Peonies
Self-Portrait
Frédéric Bazille never married, and his many intimate relationships with men prompted claims that he was gay. At the time, homosexuality was considered deviant and was almost universally repressed, particularly among the social elite in which his family was firmly rooted.