Portrait of Frédéric Bazille Painting

In 1867 Renoir and his friend Frédéric Bazille were sharing a studio in Paris, and one day they set up the same still life, a dead heron laid out on a white cloth, and painted it side by side. This is Renoir's picture of Bazille at work on his version, leaning in toward the easel. Bazille was the well-off one of the group and paid for the studio the others could not afford, so scenes like this were possible at all. On the wall behind him Renoir hung a snowy landscape, most likely one of Monet's, a quiet tribute to another friend. Bazille himself had only three years to live; he was killed in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War, at twenty-eight. The heron he is shown painting still hangs in the same museum in Montpellier as this portrait of him.