Black Woman with Peonies

Black Woman with Peonies is a painting by Frédéric Bazille, produced in late spring 1870, a few months before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, in which he would die. It has been in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier since 1918. It is an oil on canvas and its dimensions are 60.3 cm (23.7 in) × 75.2 cm (29.6 in).

Young Woman with Peonies, 1870, National Gallery of Art
Black Woman with Peonies
Year1870
Dimensions60.3 cm (23.7 in) × 75.2 cm (29.6 in)
Accession No.18.1.3 

In the year that he painted it, Bazille created another, similar, image with the same model, currently in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. He may have conceived both works as a tribute to Manet. Both paintings make use of peonies, a type of flower Édouard Manet grew in his garden and painted frequently. In one of his most famous paintings, Olympia, Manet depicted a black servant bringing a bouquet of peonies to a reclining prostitute.[1]

The model who posed for Bazille is unidentified, but is the same model who posed for Thomas Eakins's painting Female Model (1867–1869), in which she wears the same headscarf and earring seen in Young Woman with Peonies.[2]

References
  1. Painting record of Young Woman with Peonies on NGA website
  2. Bailey, Colin B. (December 19, 2019). "In Plain Sight". The New York Review of Books 66 (20): 59–62.
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