Reunión de familia

Bazille began this in the summer of 1867 on the terrace of Meric, his family's country house near Montpellier in the south of France. Eleven relatives are gathered under the trees, and nearly all of them look straight out at us, including the painter himself, who has slipped in at the far left edge. He was 25 and wealthy, sharing a studio in Paris with his friend Monet, who that same year was being turned away from the Salon. Bazille went the safer way. He reworked the canvas heavily over the following months, and after it was accepted for the 1868 Salon he painted out a small dog and replaced it with a still life of flowers and a hat. He had only a few years left. He was killed in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, at 28.