1869
Huile sur toile
56 x 46,7 cm - 22 x 18 1/4 in.
Collection particulière
Dernière mise à jour : 2022-04-09 21:49:58
Référence : MSb-52
Collection Edmond Maître - Collection Bing, Paris - E. H. Lem, Paris - Vente Paris- Drouot, 24 octobre 2012, n° 14 - Vente Paris-Drouot, 26 mars 2014, n° 9 - Collection particulière.
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1978, Frédéric Bazille and Early Impressionism, n° 40, repr. p. 89.
Marandel, Cat. exp. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1978, Frédéric Bazille and Early Impressionism, n° 40, repr. p. 89 - Daulte, Frédéric Bazille : Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, 1992, n° 43, repr. p. 172 - Schulman, Frédéric Bazille : Catalogue raisonné, 1995, n° 52, repr. p. 195 - Gazette de l'hôtel Drouot, 19 octobre 2012 (repr.) - Gazette de l'hôtel Drouot, 26 mars 2014, repr. p. 75 - Schulman, Frédéric Bazille : Catalogue raisonné numérique, 2022, n° 52.
Contrary to the title given to it in the Chicago exhibition catalogue in 1978, this Portrait of a cuirassier, n° 40, p. 89, it is indeed a dragoon that is involved here.
As in the Portrait of Alphonse Tissié in a Cavalryman's Uniform, Bazille painted a military man, but this time in profile. The dragoon wears a mustache and a fly; he looks much older than Tissié with whom he has too often been identified. The modeling of the face deliberately accentuates his age; we therefore do not believe that this is Tissié, and even less so Renoir, as has still sometimes been suggested.
The tones differ markedly between the two portraits, mostly because of the background, ochre in the Portrait of Alphonse Tissié in a Cavalryman's Uniform, green in that of this unknown man. Here, the smooth background resembles that of Manet's Femme au perroquet (1866). It hugs the contours of the man unlike the method Bazille employs in the Portrait of Alphonse Tissié in a Cavalryman's Uniform and in the Portrait of Renoir, where a generous touch emphasizes the graphic in places. Thus, in the Portrait of Alphonse Tissié in a Cavalryman's Uniform, Bazille puts, between the background and the face, the transition of a long wavy touch that starts from the helmet and goes down to the neck. In the Portrait of a dragoon, the transition is absent. It is the precise, careful graphics that characterize this portrait, which is more realistic than the other one. Bazille has thus toned down his boldness with a less violent and jerky strokes than in some of his portraits. This military man does not have the presence of Alphonse Tissié: the colors are duller and certain signs [absence of epaulets, so important in the Portrait of Alphonse Tissié in a Cavalryman's Uniform, invisible gaze] lead us to believe that Bazille is less interested here in the character than in the military costume.
Nor does it have the audacity of the Portrait of Renoir, of the other Portrait of Renoir and the recently discovered Portrait of Verlaine.
