Family Portrait

1869
Pastel et fusain sur papier
42 x 32,5 cm - 16 9/16 x 12 13/16 in.
Signé en bas à gauche : F. Bazille
Collection particulière
Dernière mise à jour : 2023-12-22 18:36:53
Référence : MSb-85

Bazille's attachment to his family is well known from his extensive correspondence and the various paintings he made of several characters, the most famous of which being The Family Gathering from 1867 in the Orsay Museum. Other compositions take up the same theme such as The Terrace at Méric from the Musée du Petit-Palais in Geneva. Apart from the paintings, some drawings, clearly preparatory, appear in the Albums RF 5259 and 5260 of the Département des Arts graphiques of the Louvre Museum. To this day, we do not know of any pastels except that he used it with charcoal in Ruth Lying down. Yet, in a letter to his mother in June 1864, he writes that an incident occurred upon his return from Honfleur: "A pastel box I had put in the same case opened and the sound it contained spilled onto the freshly painted ones" [Schulman, Frédéric Bazille: Catalogue raisonné, 1995, letter n° 80, p. 337]. Bazille clearly mentioned "the freshly painted ones". It is therefore not surprising to discover this pastel in Bazille's work where he again camps his family.

As in his painting in the Orsay Museum, the people here all pose elegantly, making this painting an obvious social and family scene. On the left is probably drawn the Portrait of Marc Bazille, his brother. Admittedly, the character is a bit older and portly. The other one on the right - a woman - is holding a child on her lap. It could well be Suzanne Tissié, wife of Marc Bazille and their daughter Valentine born in June 1868, which makes the dating of the pastel logical.

Note the fashionable hairstyles of the time, especially that of Suzanne Tissié, in the image of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria as she appears in Winterhalter's painting of 1865. We do not know who are the other children, but we do know with certainty that the Bazille family consisted of many adults and children. There are other similarities to be underlined. We note, for example, the very discreet presence of a man sketched on the left of the pastel. One will most certainly recognize Bazille there as he appears on the left in The Family Gathering. This is an indelible mark of his personal vision. On the left, isn't the dog Rita, the family dog, as seen in several paintings and drawings?

An extensive study by a specialized analysis laboratory proves that the pigments are indeed from the nineteenth century and that the signature fits perfectly into the pastel and has therefore not been reported.