The Pink Dress

Bazille was twenty-three when he painted this in 1864, and it shows his cousin Thérèse des Hours sitting on a low stone wall at the family estate near Montpellier, in the warm south of France. Instead of posing her to face us, he turns her almost fully away, so she looks out over the sunlit village of Castelnau-le-Lez rather than at the viewer. His preparatory drawings had her facing front in the usual way, and he changed his mind, choosing the more relaxed, thoughtful pose we see now. She wears a dress striped in pink and silver with a black apron, and the whole scene is painted outdoors, in the open air. Bazille came from a well-off family and would quietly help support his friend Monet in the lean years. He never saw where this direction led. He was killed in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, at twenty-eight.