Portrait of Renoir

Bazille painted this small, intimate portrait of his friend and fellow studio companion Renoir in 1867, the year the two young artists were sharing quarters in Paris. It is one of the earliest surviving likenesses of Renoir and a record of the comradeship at the heart of the circle that would become Impressionism: Bazille, wealthy and generous, supported and exhibited beside the poorer artists of the group before his death in the Franco-Prussian War. The picture’s candid immediacy, its relaxed pose and its frank handling of paint capture the sitter as he was at twenty-six, before fame — a document of friendship as much as a portrait.