Landscape at Chailly

Frederic Bazilles Landscape at Chailly from 1865 is an early work by the artist whose career was tragically cut short by his death in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, painted during the summer he spent at Chailly-en-Bire near the Forest of Fontainebleau with his friend Claude Monet. The landscape depicts a sunlit path through the forest with the broad handling and attention to atmospheric effects that distinguish Bazilles work from the more finished academic landscapes of his contemporaries. The year 1865 was a pivotal one for Bazille: he had just left the studio of Charles Gleyre, where he had met Monet, Renoir, and Sisley, and was beginning to develop the plein-air approach to landscape that would characterize the Impressionist movement. The painting shows a young artist absorbing the lessons of the Barbizon painters who had been working in the Forest of Fontainebleau since the 1830s, particularly the example of Courbets bold brushwork and Corots tonal subtlety, while beginning to develop the lighter palette and broken touch that would distinguish Impressionist landscape from its predecessors. Bazilles particular contribution to this development was his habit of placing figures in his landscapes with a naturalness that avoided both the theatrical groupings of academic painting and the decorative isolation of Courbets figures. The painting is also a document of the landscape that shaped Impressionism: the Forest of Fontainebleau and the village of Chailly-en-Bire were the testing ground where the young painters of the future Impressionist group first applied their new approach to observing and recording the effects of outdoor light.

Bazilles early landscapes are essential documents of the pre-history of Impressionism, recording the moment when the young painters who would form the Impressionist group were developing their plein-air technique. Landscape at Chailly preserves the specific artistic context in which Impressionism was born and demonstrates the talent that was lost when Bazille was killed at age 28.

An early landscape by Bazille depicting a sunlit path through the Forest of Fontainebleau at Chailly, recording the plein-air experiments of the future Impressionists in the landscape that shaped their approach to outdoor light and demonstrating the talent lost when the artist was killed at 28.