Interpretive Resource

In this self-portrait, Frédéric Bazille—an important member of the group of emerging artists later to become known as the Impressionists—responded to the effects of tone and contrast achieved by Edouard Manet. Manet’s 1863 exhibition at the Martinet gallery, Paris, had utterly seduced the younger painter: "You wouldn’t believe how much I’m learning by looking at these pictures," he wrote to his parents. "One of these sessions is worth a month’s work." The white form of Bazille’s left shirtsleeve stands out starkly against dark surroundings, taking on a life of its own. The same could be said of the palette, which is held vertically and parallel to the picture plane, a contrivance that gives maximum exposure to its pigment-smeared surface. These gestures intensify our awareness of painting as artifice in ways very much in the spirit of Manet. But Bazille was already capable of genuine originality.

The disposition of the figure generates unease. The torso is angled away, but the head turns toward us, creating a torsion and muscular strain that we sense unawares. The oddly disparate levels of the elbows and the angle of the left forearm establish an upward diagonal. Furthermore, there is something subtly distorted about the configuration of the facial features; given that Bazille was exceptionally tall, we see more of the top of the head than we should. Taken together, these observations suggest the primary reason for the portrait’s exceptional presence: Bazille painted it while looking at himself in a mirror hung high on the wall and pitched at a slight forward tilt, the consequences of which he duly recorded. As a result, viewers standing before the image can experience a subliminal sense of levitation, as if held momentarily in mid-air by the artist’s unremitting gaze.