Autoportrait

Bazille painted himself here around 1865, in his early twenties, palette in hand and just committed to art. He had come to Paris from a well-off family in Montpellier to study medicine, failed his exam in 1864, and thrown himself into painting instead. He was generous with his money, renting studios he shared with Monet and Renoir when they were broke, and he stood right at the centre of the young group that would soon be called the Impressionists. He never saw them get the name. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 Bazille enlisted, and that November he was killed in action at Beaune-la-Rolande. He was 28. The first Impressionist exhibition opened four years after his death.