Frédéric BAZILLE - The artist's atelier (1879)

 

The artist's atelier

1870
Oil painting on canvas (97x112 cm)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

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A scene of lived artistic life. We are invited to enter Bazille's studio, where we find him commenting on one of his paintings with Édouard Manet and Claude Monet (with the hat). On the left of the scene we find Pierre Auguste Renoir, seated, engaged in conversation with Émile Zola, standing on the staircase.

Bazille shows off all his skill in modeling figures and in broad strokes of color. In this painting, a detail deviates from his painting, the portrait of himself that was painted here by Manet.

Unfortunately Bazille died four years before the exhibition that inaugurated the era of Impressionism; despite this biographical data, Bazille is considered closely linked to the movement because his new painting photographically recorded everyday life.

He died at the age of 29, during a war in Prussia, and it was in this way that he was able to create a small number of works.

Short sad note, shortly before his untimely death this same painting was rejected by the French Academy.

Comparing artists: Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Teniers