1866-1867
Huile sur toile
40,5 x 32,5 cm - 15 7/8 x 12 3/4 in.
Monogrammé en bas à droite : F. B.
Collection particulière
Dernière mise à jour : 2022-06-04 19:19:33
Référence : MSb-82
Thérèse des Hours, épouse de Gaston Auriol, cousine germaine de Bazille - Henriette Auriol, épouse du général Cazalis, fille de Thérèse Auriol - Galerie Blot, Paris - Collection Horndasch, Munich - Collection particulière - Vente Koller, Zurich, 1 juillet 2022, n° 3203 (voir le site de la vente).
As far as we know, never exhibited
Schulman Frédéric Bazille : Catalogue raisonné - Supplément 2, 2016, n° 3, repr. p. 6 - Schulman, Frédéric Bazille : Catalogue raisonné numérique, 2022, n° 82.
On the back of the original frame, an inscription in black ink is clearly legible, we read "The woman at the piano painted by F. Bazille in 1866 purchased from J. R. Henry Cazalis, husband of Henriette Auriol on May 13, 1900. Therese having served as a model for the painting, Therese cousin of Bazille and mother of Henriette ". Just like another painting by Bazille belonging to the same collection [Thérèse Reading in the Park at Méric], Bazille's cousin Thérèse owned it and then bequeathed it to her younger daughter Henriette, married to General Jules René Henry Cazalis. The latter probably sold it to the Blot gallery, which in turn sold it to Mr. Horndasch, living in Munich. The current owners having bought the painting (as well as others, some of which have gone on public sale in recent years) in the 1960s from the Horndasch family [Sotheby's sale, Paris, March 1, 2018, n° 178].
Besides painting, Bazille was passionate about music. He went to concerts, listened to Berlioz, Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer. In several letters to his parents, he wrote that he played the piano, as in the one sent to his mother on January 18, 1863: "I am at this moment at Victor's [Frat] house, we are talking and playing the piano". This passion for music is found in his letters where he describes the Young Woman Playing the Piano refused at the 1866 Salon and recently rediscovered under Ruth and Booz in the Fabre Museum thanks to X-rays.
It is therefore not surprising to discover this Young Woman Playing the Piano most likely executed in his studio as the paintings on the wall above the piano tend to show. The one at the top right will hold our attention. It is indeed the same painting Village Street, Chailly executed at Chailly-en-Bière near Barbizon in 1865. This last painting appraised by us [Schulman, Frédéric Bazille: Catalogue raisonné, 1995, n° 16, repr. p. 125] is now part of the collections of the Fabre Museum. This cross-referencing allows the two paintings to be definitively authenticated. Two significant discoveries that come to mark Bazille's work, the knowledge we have of it and its evolution.
