One of Bazille’s final works, Mélopée occupies a distinct position within his production of 1870, the year of his death in the Franco-Prussian War. Painted contemporaneously with two major late compositions, La Toilette (Musée Fabre, Montpellier) and Young Woman with Peonies (known in versions at the Musée Fabre, Montpellier and the National Gallery of Art, Washington), it features the same Black female model who appears in both works, establishing her as a central presence in his practice at this decisive moment. The painting was executed in Bazille’s studio on the Rue de la Condamine in the Batignolles district, a workspace he shared in the final years of his life with Pierre‑Auguste Renoir.
The painting has never been publicly exhibited or offered for sale and is presented here for the first time, having remained with the descendants of the Bazille family. It is unlined and in excellent condition, preserving the immediacy and clarity of the original brushwork.
Although her name is unrecorded, the model appears to be the same woman represented in Thomas Eakins’s Female Model (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco). Eakins resided in Paris from 1866 to 1869, overlapping with Bazille’s mature years. Her recurrence across studios points to the circulation of professional sitters and to the interconnected artistic networks of the period.
In the later nineteenth century, Paris experienced a marked increase in immigration from across Europe and from France’s colonies. The Batignolles district, where Bazille’s studio on the Rue de La Condamine was located, was socially and racially diverse. The growing visibility of Black Parisians was reflected in artists’ studios and, more broadly, in modern painting’s engagement with contemporary urban life.
Bazille’s treatment inevitably recalls Édouard Manet’s Olympia, in which a Black maid occupies a critical position within a radically modern composition. While Bazille’s approach is quieter and more introspective, his decision to present a Black woman as the primary subject similarly participates in the redefinition of pictorial hierarchy and modern subject matter. David Bindman has suggested that she was likely a friend of Bazille rather than an anonymous professional model, a relationship that may account for the psychological nuance and dignity of her portrayal (Bindman and Gates, The Image of the Black in Western Art, 2012).
In Mélopée she is shown alone, seated and playing a long-necked string instrument, possibly a loutar or lotar, related to the lute traditions of the Greek and Arab worlds. Music, a recurring interest for Bazille and the subject of his lost Young Girl at the Piano (Salon of 1866), provides the motif. The emphasis, however, rests on the figure herself - her hands poised on the strings, her expression composed and introspective. The composition is structured through refined chromatic contrasts. A deep crimson field occupies one side of the background, set against pearly whites and muted tonalities on the other, recalling the controlled spatial divisions of his other late works.
Unpublished and previously unseen on the market, Mélopée deepens understanding of Bazille’s final year, extending the dialogue between his figural compositions, musical themes, and evolving modern sensibility. One of only four known paintings in which he depicts a Black model, it reflects a broader contemporary interest in representing the Parisian diaspora.
Provenance
The estate of the artist, and by inheritance to,Paul Castelnau (1832-1892), by descent to his daughter
Jeanne Castelnau (1856-1951), and her husband Felix Rouffio (1845-1915), by descent to their son
Paul Rouffio (1885-1951), by descent to his sister
Marie Rouffio (1897-1987), and her husband Frédéric Westphal (1891-1978) (documented in a photograph taken in the family house)
Private collection, France, by descent from the above, until 2026
