Portrait of Renoir — About This Work
Frédéric Bazille, 1867
About the Work
Frédéric Bazille painted Portrait of Renoir in 1867, when he and Pierre-Auguste Renoir were both twenty-six and still finding their place in the Paris art world. Bazille had met Renoir, Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley while studying in the studio of Charles Gleyre, and by this point he was sharing a studio with Renoir and Monet. The portrait therefore records not a formal commission but one young painter looking closely at another within a circle that was helping to shape what would become Impressionism.
Renoir sits in a red chair and meets the viewer directly. Bazille handles the jacket and blue cravat with quick, fluid strokes, while the face is more carefully modelled. The loosely worked background and the pale rectangular form at upper right resist the polished finish expected of conventional portraiture. Instead, the surface remains visibly active, with brushwork that gives the painting a sense of immediacy and informality.
The work is also poignant because Bazille's career was so brief. He played an important role in the early development of the Impressionist circle, but was killed in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War at the age of twenty-eight. Portrait of Renoir survives as an unusually intimate record of friendship and artistic exchange at a formative moment for both painters.
The Work
Artist: Frédéric Bazille
Title: Portrait of Renoir
Date: 1867
Medium: Oil on canvas
Recorded dimensions: 40.5 cm high × 32.5 cm wide
Collection: Cleveland Museum of Art
Accession number: 2021.134
Print & Presentation
Palatine presentation: 40 × 50 cm portrait frame.
The complete artwork is reproduced at approximately its recorded 32.5 × 40.5 cm dimensions, without cropping or distortion. The surrounding white presentation area is incorporated into the print rather than added as a separate mount.
Frame finishes: Black, White or Natural.
Paper & glazing: Enhanced Matte + Perspex; Enhanced Matte + Moth-Eye.
Why Original Scale?
Most art-print shops offer the same image in a choice of Small, Medium and Large sizes. We take a different approach. For each edition, we begin with the recorded dimensions of the original work and reproduce the complete image at that scale, preserving its proportions and avoiding enlargement, reduction, cropping or distortion.
Source: Cleveland Museum of Art, Open Access / CC0.
Care: Display in a dry interior away from prolonged direct sunlight and sources of moisture.
Notes from Palatine
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