Quotes

Frederic Bazille was a generous, sociable artist who left much correspondence behind through letters to his friends and family. These provide the majority of attributable quotes that remain from his lifetime.

Famous Quotes by Frederic Bazille

I've been amusing myself recently painting the interior of my studio with my friends. Manet is helping me with it, and I may send it to the exhibition in Montpellier. This painting has delayed the one (Scène d'Été) I am going to do for the [Paris] Salon, but I am working hard and it won't take very long to complete.

In a letter to the artist's father, 1 January 1870

I have almost finished a large landscape (Landscape by the Lez River), I am completely alone in the countryside; 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.

In a letter to Edmond Maitre, 2 August 1870

If I did not know how unhappy you (Claude Monet) are, I certainly would not take the trouble to respond to the letter that reached me this morning. You try to demonstrate to me that I don't keep my promises, but you have only succeeded in proving to me your ingratitude. As far as I know I had never had the air to give you charity. I know to the contrary, better than everyone, the value of the painting that I have purchased [ Monet's painting 'Women in the garden' purchased by Bazille] and I very much regret not being wealthy enough to offer you better conditions.

In a letter to Claude Monet, 2 Jan. 1867

Monet has popped up out of nowhere with a collection of magnificent canvases.. .With Renoir, that makes two hard-up painters I am putting up. It's quite an infirmary here.

In a letter to his mother, February 1867

(Monet is) 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.

In a letter to his brother, December 1865

I have no intention of being killed, there's too much I still want to do with my life.

Written just before the artist's death in the Franco-Prussian War

Quotes about Frederic Bazille by Art Historians and Fellow Artists

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.

Henri Focillon

The oeuvre of Frédéric Bazille is unclassifiable.

Henri Fantin-Latour

That pure-hearted gentle knight.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

(Bazille had not died) romantically, galloping over a Delacroix' battlefield... but stupidly, during the retreat, on a muddy road.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Bazille sets up his easel in direct sunlight to paint under the magical effects of daylight ( in Scene d'Été'). 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 (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.

Zacharie Astruc

I like that (View of the Village) 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.

J Ixe