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Frédéric Bazille-Biography

Born Jean-Frédéric Bazille, on December 6, 1841, in Montpellier, France. The scion of a prominent family in the
South of France, Bazille went to Paris in the early 1860s to study medicine. Although his parents disapproved,
he soon abandoned his medical studies to pursue his love of painting. While studying at the studio of Charles
Gleyre from 1862-63, Bazille met Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, all of whom would
become founding members of the revolutionary Impressionist movement of the late nineteenth century.

Bazille's spacious living quarters in the Batignolles neighborhood in Paris became a central meeting place for
his friends and fellow artists; an early name for the Impressionists was the "Batignolles School." The wealthy
Bazille played an important role in supporting Monet and Renoir during their early careers, as both men
(especially Renoir) would often stay with Bazille and share his studio. Two paintings done in 1870 depict this
early stage of Impressionism: Bazille's own The Artist's Studio in the Rue de la Condamine, which shows Renoir,
the journalist and critic Émile Zola, Monet, Édouard Manet, Bazille, and Edmond Maitre in Bazille's studio; and
Henri Fantin-Latour's A Studio in the Batignolles Quarter, featuring Bazille, Renoir, Zola, Manet, and Monet.

Preliminary plans for the first independent Impressionist exhibition were interrupted by the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). Bazille joined the infantry, against the pleas of his friends, and was sent to Algeria
for combat training. By the late fall of 1870, he was at the front. Tragically, Bazille was killed in action in his first
battle, on November 28, 1870, at the age of 29.

Bazille never married, and his intimate relationships with his male friends prompted later claims that he was a
homosexual, which at the time was considered deviant and was almost universally repressed. In his short life,
he formed important friendships with a number of artists who would become the most celebrated of the
Impressionists, including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Berthe Morisot. Had it not been for his early death,
Bazille himself was almost certainly destined to become one of the leaders of the Impressionist revolution.