Frédéric Bazille (French, 1841–1870) was an Impressionist painter who played an important role in the movement’s formative years, and celebrated for his Figurative en plein air portraits, which combined a delicate feeling for nature with a strong sense of color. Bazille was born into a wealthy family, and was pressured to study medicine, rather than art. However, inspired by the work of Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863), Bazille persuaded his family to support his passion, and moved to Paris in 1862, where he soon began studying under Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre (Swiss, 1808–1874). He became friends with notable French artists Claude Monet (1840–1926), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Édouard Manet (1832–1883), and Alfred Sisley (1839–1899), and by the age of 23 had already created many of his most famous works, such as Pink Dress (c.1864), and exhibited at the Official Salon in 1866. Known for his generosity, Bazille’s wealth allowed him to support his artist friends financially, and provide them with higher-quality tools and studio space. His most famous painting, Réunion de famille (1867)—depicting 10 members of his close family, as well as himself, inserted into the far left—was selected by the Salon in 1868. Bazille struggled with this work over many months, and was never fully satisfied with it. He later expressed embarrassment that it was selected by the Salon, while works he felt were superior by his friend Monet were not. Bazille joined the French army in 1870, one month after the Franco-Prussian War began, and died in battle at age 28. At the time of his death, Bazille’s career was ascending rapidly, and he seemed destined to hold a much more prominent place among the Impressionist movement than the one he has ultimately attained. Retrospectives of his work have been held at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and—more recently—at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and his work is in the permanent collections of the Louvre and the Musée d''Orsay in Paris, among other institutions.