Visual Art Impressionism Fact of the Day
posted by June 26 at 11:00 AM
onAnd now, for the final chapter of our resourceful, underappreciated, unpopular-with-the-ladies, mostly now unheard-of impressionist hero Bazille:
It was not until 12 February that Manet received some terrible news. On 20 November, during a minor attack on Beaune-la-Rolande, Bazille had been killed. He had not died ‘romantically, galloping over a Delacroix battlefield,’ as Renoir put it, but ‘stupidly, during the retreat, on a muddy road.’ In the freezing weather, Bazille’s father made the journey to Beaune-la-Rolande. For ten days he dug in the snow-covered battleground, looking for his son. Eventually he found his body. He hauled it back to Montpellier himself, on a peasant’s cart.
*From Sue Roe’s The Private Lives of the Impressionists
A self-portrait by Frederic Bazille from 1865-66. He died in 1870.
There are three paintings by Bazille in the impressionist show at SAM. One is a gray-toned still-life of a dead heron strung up above a row of dead little birds lying on their backs.
Comments
i love this feature-is the book very readable (aka not like an art history textbook)? i'm going to have to pick it up.
1870? would that have been in the Franco-Prussian war?
Yes, the Franco-Prussian War.
I am your answer for all things French art-nerd related.
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