“Like a Classical Sculpture”

Notes the website The Art Story about Frédéric Bazille's 1868 painting “Fisherman with a Net.”

Bazille was eager to demonstrate his capability as a figure painter and, in keeping with the efforts of the Realists and early Impressionists to situate the figure in an outdoor setting and to accurately depict the effect of light and other atmospheric phenomena, he chose this very unusual subject of a naked fisherman.

Depicting nudes in landscape settings was not new; in fact, the motif dates back at least to the Renaissance. What was novel was, as art historian Gary Tinterow explains, “making the relationship between the naked body and its setting as accurate as possible in terms of proportion, depth and light.”

The results of Bazille's efforts are two expertly constructed male nudes that conform to the exacting principles of the academy in terms of construction of the human figure. The contours of their bodies are sharply defined, unlike an Impressionist work and, while Bazille locates them in the outdoors, he places them in the shade while still demonstrating his prowess at depicting natural light as the sun pierces the canopy of the woods here and there.

The male figure in the foreground stands with his back to the viewer, looking for all the world like a classical sculpture. He holds a net, which is preparing to cast into the river, a practice that was evidently common along the Lez River outside of Montpellier.

Bazille wrote to his parents about this work, telling them how his friends complimented him on this painting. He submitted it as well as another painting, A View of the Village (1868), to the 1869 Salon but it was refused.

Years later, at the 1910 Paris Salon, the painter Suzanne Valadon saw Fisherman with a Net and produced a similar version of the painting [right].

See also the previous posts:
• “A Painting of a Desired, and Desiring, Subject”
• Yesteryear
• Beauty