NARRATOR:
Nineteenth-century artists and writers were fascinated with Orientalist themes—imagery they believed to stem from North Africa, Turkey or the Middle East. Rarely accurate, paintings like this one by Jean-Frédéric Bazille, were a pretext to depict what was extraordinary, titillating and strange to the bourgeois audiences who eagerly purchased them.
We don’t know exactly what the young woman in this picture is doing. Under her colorful robe, she wears only a white, translucent chemise. Her eyes are modestly cast down as she ties her knot; perhaps she’s conscious of her partial nudity. The saber and striped kaftan on the wall behind her suggest a male presence—a client or lover, perhaps—while the empty brass tray on the floor may allude to refreshments she has served.
Bazille was born into a wealthy Protestant family in Montpelier, France. He studied medicine for a short time, soon abandoning it for painting and befriending the likes of Renoir and Monet. Later, he was an army recruit in Algeria, and in 1870 died during the Franco-Prussian war, at the young age of 29—only one year after he completed this picture.
An x-ray reveals something unusual about this canvas. To hear about it, press 3391.
Woman in a Moorish Costume
1869
Jean-Frédéric Bazille (French, 1841-1870)
On View
Lise Tréhot, Renoir’s first mistress, model, and muse, is here depicted with quiet eroticism by that artist’s friend and colleague, Bazille. Dressed in North African costume, Tréhot poses in the Left Bank studio that Bazille and Renoir shared in the late 1860s. Among the most promising members of the Parisian avant-garde, Bazille did not live to see the flowering of Impressionism in the following decade. Like Manet and Degas, he enlisted in the French national guard during the Franco-Prussian War, but Bazille was killed in action on November 28, 1870.
Details
- Artist Name: Jean-Frédéric Bazille (French, 1841-1870)
- Title: Woman in a Moorish Costume
- Date: 1869
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 39-1/4 x 23-1/4 in. (99.7 x 59 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1997.2.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
Marc Bazille (the artist’s brother 1845-1923), by inheritance to;
Mme. Meynier de Salinelles, Montpellier, by 1941, by inheritance to;
Mme. Penchinat [or Pinchinat] de Salinelles, Nimes, by 1959 (sale, Paris, Palais Galliera, 14 June 1967, unnumbered lot).
[E. V. Thaw & Co., Inc., New York, sold 1969 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation, transferred 1997 to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Mme. Meynier de Salinelles, Montpellier, by 1941, by inheritance to;
Mme. Penchinat [or Pinchinat] de Salinelles, Nimes, by 1959 (sale, Paris, Palais Galliera, 14 June 1967, unnumbered lot).
[E. V. Thaw & Co., Inc., New York, sold 1969 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation, transferred 1997 to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Matisse/Odalisque
- Norton Simon Museum, 2019-02-22 to 2019-06-17
- Sarraute, Gabriel, Catalogue de l'oeuvre de Frédéric Bazille,no. 34 pp. 81-82
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum,1989, p. 127
- Marandel, Jean-Patrice, Frédéric Bazille: Prophet of Impressionism,fig. 30 pp. 66-67, 75, 163
- collective under the direction of Michel Hilaire and Paul Perrin, Frédéric Bazille (1841-1870) and the Birth of Impressionism,2016, fig. 16 pp. 39, 40, 159, 237, 285 ; 40 (ill.)
- Daulte, François, Arts,
- DelPlato, Joan, Multiple Wives, Multiple Pleasures: Representing the Harem, 1800-1875,fig. 7.3 p. 233, 235
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- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best,2010, cat. 709 p. 330
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- Bajou-Charpentreau, Valérie M., Frédéric Bazille 1841-1870,fig. 89, x-ray pp. 163, 172-173
- Michel Schulman, Jean-Frédéric Bazille,2022, https://www.bazille-catalogue.com/woman-in-a-moorish-costume-49.html
- Bezombes, Roger, L'Exotisme dans l'art et la pensée,no. 302 pp. 103, 185
- Exposition Internationale, Rétrospective Bazille,no. 30
- Poulain, Gaston, Bazille et ses amis,no. 34 pp. 134-136, 217
- Bonafoux, Pascal, Bazille: Les plaisirs et les jours, pp. 48-49
- Daulte, François, Connaissance des Arts,no. 226 p. 88
- Association de étudiants protestants, Exposition Frédéric Bazille, 1841-1870,no. 4
- Laprade, Jacques de, Beaux-Arts,no. 117 pp. 1, 8
- Schulman, Michel, Frédéric Bazille 1841-1870: Catalogue raisonné. Peintures-Dessins, pastels, aquarelles. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa correspondence,no. 49, x- ray pp. 189-190
- Dolan, Thérèse, Gazette de Beaux-Arts,fig. 1 pp. 99-103
- Musée Fabre, Centenaire de Frédéric Bazille,no. 30
- Guérif, J., A la recherche d'une esthetique protestante: Frédéric Bazille, p. 24
- Pitman, Dianne W., Bazille: Purity, Pose, and Painting in the 1860s,no. 4, fig. 111 pp. 169-170, 178-179, 261
- Michel, François-Bernard, Frédéric Bazille. Reflexions sur la peinture, la médicine, le paysage et le portrait . . ., pp. 247-248
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1,2006,
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