His parents intended him to run the family business, but he met the Impressionists in 1862 and became hooked on painting landscapes.
Bazille
Six distinctive group portraits are now the works for which he is best known. But aren’t they strange, set in comparison with contemporary paintings?
A group portrait which failed so badly that he cut it up after it was shown at the Salon, a portrait of Manet, and another group portrait which inspired Impressionists.
After the huge death toll of the war, including 2 major painters, a week in Paris in May resulted in a further 7,000 deaths, and the destruction of public buildings. Hardly a painter in France wasn’t affected.
A mainstay for the Impressionists, their use in domestic products like wallpaper and even clothing killed people in the 19th century. Probably not Napoleon, though.
We don’t know their names as well, but we know the faces and bodies of those who model for artists. They achieve some kind of immortality.
A landscape without human or animal figures often looks eery or unnatural. This new series looks at how figures are used in landscape paintings, with copious examples.
Dividing his time between his home in Courrières and Brittany, he broadened his range of subjects and views – with mounting success.
His remarkable paintings of figures in landscapes were well received at the Salons. Then came the Franco-Prussian War, and his death after just 8 years of painting.
He was famously and tragically killed in 1870, but how well do you know his paintings?
