Frédéric Bazille Quotes (1841-1870)

“I have almost finished a large landscape [painting 'Landscape by the Lez River' - [around Montpellier].. ..I am completely alone on the country; my cousins and my brother are at the resort. My father and mother are living in town; this solitude pleases me enormously; it makes me work a lot and read a lot.”

“[about his friend Monet, in 1865] ..hard at work for some time now. His paintings has really progressed, I'm sure it will attract a lot of attention. He has sold thousands of franc's worth of paintings in the last few days, and has one or two other small commissions. He's definitely on his way.”

“My dear Bazille, I ask myself what you can be doing in Paris during fine weather, for I suppose that it must also be very fine there. Here [in Honfleur, Normandy], my dear fellow, it is charming, and I discover every day always beautiful things. It is enough to become mad [fou], so much do I have the desire to do it all, my head is cracking. Damn it, here it is the sixteenth, put aside your cliques and your claques, and come spend a couple of weeks here, it would be the best thing that you could do, because in Paris it cannot be very easy to work.. ..Are you making any progress? Yes, I am sure of it, but what I am sure of is that you do not work enough and not in the right way. It is not with carefree guys like your Villa and others that you will be able to work. It would be better all alone, and yet, all alone there are plenty of things that one cannot make out.”

“My dear Bazille, your painting 'La Femme' [ official title of his exhibited painting: 'View of the Village', 1868] has been accepted; I am glad to give you this good news. You were defended (between us) [in the jury of the Salon] by Bonnat, and guess who else? By Cabanel!”

“The tall fellow Bazille has done something I find quite fine [ in his exhibited painting 'View of the Village':] a young girl in a very light dress in the shadow of a tree beyond which one sees a town. There is a good deal of light, sunlight, He is trying to do what we [Berthe Morisot and her sister Edma both painted] have so often tried to bring off: to paint a figure in the open air [in the outdoor light]. This time I think he has succeed.”

“I like that [Bazille's painting 'View of the Village', 1868] very much. Certainly it is original and new, very new.. .A young lady, dressed in white and hat-less is seated in the shade on a knoll, at the very bottom of the painting. She looks at you with an expression all the more vacuous because it scarcely accounts for a nuance of shy uneasiness.. .One hesitates at first between qualifying the work as eccentric or as naive. In the end one must recognize that all the boldness of composition and colour is absolutely true. The perspective, above all, particularly difficult, is as exact as seen through the lens of a 'camera lucida' or in a photograph. The color and effect.. ..equally impose themselves by their healthy sincerity.”

“Bazille sets up his easel in direct sunlight to paint under the magical effects of daylight [in Bazille's painting: 'Scene d'Été', 1869]. There is an abyss between old and new.. ..the old feeling that captivated us in the work of the masters.. ..is here again, the figure lives in a breath-able air.. .Bazille has already mastered one element, an amazing comprehension of light, the particular impression of the open air, the power of daylight. Sun floods his canvases. In 'Baigneurs' [official title now: 'Scene d'Été'] the meadow is as though on fire. It is happy, it sings and plays. The eye feasts. We shall notice finesse in the shades of flesh, the two small wrestlers in the sun, and the man dressing near the trees, in the comforting heat of a beautiful summer afternoon.”

“[Bazille had not died] romantically, galloping over a Delacroix' battlefield.. ..but stupidly, during the retreat, on a muddy road.”

“He belongs.. ..,not as a talented beginner but as a master, to this history of the rebirth of French painting which restores the link between man, nature and light.. .He bears in his soul and in his art, mixed to his delicious charm and his painterly audacity, a sort of severe quality, a pride of retained youth he might hold from his protestant education.”