Monet's Vulnerable Masculinity in Frédéric Bazille's The Improvised Field Hospital

Abstract

In 1865, the early Impressionist painter Frédéric Bazille went to meet his close friend Claude Monet in Chailly-en-Bière, small village just on the outskirts of the forest of Fontainebleau. When Monet injured his leg shortly after Bazille arrived, Bazille painted The Improvised Field Hospital (Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France), which displayed his friend convalescing in bed at their inn, depicting rare moment of vulnerability on the part of the shrewd and manipulative Monet. The relationship between these young artists has often formed the cornerstone for narratives about the origins of impressionism as an artistic style, but scholars have failed to analyze the homosocial power dynamic between the two artists as defined by reports of their interactions in their own letters, the letters and memoirs of their friends, and in the painted portraits of their social circle that provided practice in modern portraiture for the young and mostly impoverished artists. With this personal history in mind, I posit that Bazille used the The Improvised Field Hospital as part of his own project to construct and reify his masculine social position on his canvases through his choices in subject matter and composition. At least temporarily, this painting allowed Bazille to turn the tables and present the pugnacious Monet as his vulnerable, inferior counterpart.