Edmond Maître by Bazille, Frédéric
Frédéric Bazille painted this portrait of his friend Edmond Maître in 1869, when both men were in their late twenties and Paris lay before them.
Look closely at the sitter's downcast eyes. He's not performing for a public portrait. He's reading music, completely absorbed and unaware of us. The crisp white collar, the dark wool coat, and the tiny blue boutonniere tell us something about intimate male friendship in Second Empire Paris: dignified, warm, and full of small, personal codes.
Bazille was a fellow traveler of the Impressionists, a friend to Monet and Renoir, and a generous spirit who often helped them financially. He painted his friends with an unguarded tenderness that few artists of his generation matched. Less than a year after he finished this canvas, the Franco-Prussian War began. Bazille volunteered immediately.
On November 28, 1870, he was killed in action at the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande. He was 28 years old. This quiet painting, with its musician reading and a friend watching, outlasted almost everything else. It hangs now in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier.
What might Bazille have painted if he had lived to see the full arc of Impressionism?
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Transcript
He looks like a man caught in the middle of a thought. The painter was Frédéric Bazille. He was only 28. The year was 1869. Bazille painted his closest friends. This man is Edmond Maître, a musician. He is holding sheet music. A blue boutonniere. A tiny act of style between friends. Less than a year after this was painted, Bazille volunteered to fight in the Franco-Prussian War. He was killed at the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande. This private look between two young men became a last record.