Family Reunion

Eleven members of the painter's prosperous family pose on a shaded terrace at their estate near Montpellier, some seated, some standing, all turned toward us in the dappled summer light. Frederic Bazille, a close friend of Monet and Renoir, blends careful portraiture with a fresh plein-air brightness. Now in the Musee d'Orsay, Family Reunion is his most ambitious work - a sunlit group portrait poised between tradition and the new outdoor painting. Bazille was killed in the Franco-Prussian War at twenty-eight, his brilliant promise cut short before Impressionism fully arrived.