The entry in the Nouveau Petit Larousse Illustré says only “Bazille (Frédéric), peintre impressionniste français, né à Montpellier (1841-70).” Nothing more to be said about a man that Camille Pissarro, a mature painter ten years Bazille’s senior, described as “one of the most gifted among us.” By contrast, the entry on Bazille’s friend and contemporary Claude Monet reads “peintre français, né à Paris (1841-1926). Poète de la lumière, chef et representant typique de l’impressionnisme; auteur des Nymphéas (Orangerie), Les Peupliers, Vues de Vetheuil.” There’s even a photo of the man himself, one of Nadar’s portraits with the cropped hair and bushy beard. The point? Obviously, that Monet outlived his colleague by more than half a century, ample time in which to establish himself as a poet of light. It’s worth noting, too, that not one of the three series identified by those codifiers of French culture, the editors of Larousse, as Monet’s most characteristic and significant achievements—the Waterlilies, the Poplars, the Views of Vetheuil—was painted before Monet turned forty. That was in 1880, a decade after poor Bazille was killed, a week short of his twenty-ninth birthday, in the carnage of the Franco-Prussian War.

Bazille had been painting for a brief eight years, most of them, if not precisely as a student, at least as a rookie. Did he have time to fulfill the promise Pissarro saw? It has been difficult to judge, since only sixty-five canvases have survived and those are