Frédéric Bazille

Despite his early death during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Frédéric Bazille is remembered as one of the formative figures of French Impressionism. A reluctant medical student in 1860s Paris, he took up painting lessons and soon fell in with the likes of Monet, Sisley and Renoir. The term ‘Impressionist’ had yet to be coined, but he spent the next few years as a member of this radical artistic community. Family wealth meant he could provide Monet and Renoir with financial support, while he painted alongside them in Normandy and Fontainebleu. He shared the Impressionists’ interest for painting ‘everyday’ life, as well as for working outdoors – en plein air. However, much of Bazille’s work was made in the studio and executed in a ‘tighter’ style than the other Impressionists. The fact that his pictures were also more concerned with the figure, rather than landscape for its own sake, meant that his work was often closer to the ‘Realism’ of painters like Courbet.