Jean Frédéric Bazille was a French Impressionist painter. Many of Bazille's major works are examples of figure painting in which he placed the subject figure within a landscape painted en plein air.
Frédéric Bazille, Self-portrait, 1865–1866, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago
Studio in Rue de La Condamine, 1870, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Among Bazille's friends portrayed are Pierre-Auguste Renoir sitting, and Édouard Manet next to Bazille, who portrays himself painting.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille painting The Heron
Self Portrait, unknown date
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.
Impression, Sunrise, an 1872 Claude Monet oil on canvas painting now housed at Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. This painting became the source of the movement's name after Louis Leroy's 1874 article, "The Exhibition of the Impressionists", satirically implied that the painting was, at most, a sketch.
J. M. W. Turner's atmospheric work was influential on the birth of Impressionism, here The Fighting Temeraire (1839)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette), 1876, Musée d'Orsay, one of Impressionism's most celebrated masterpieces.
Édouard Manet, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), 1863
