Bazille and Camille (Study for Déjeuner sur l’Herbe )

A couple stands on a forest path.
Sunlight filters through the trees, falling on the woman's slate-gray gown.

It was the summer of 1865.
Young Claude Monet was in the Forest of Fontainebleau,
near the village of Chailly-en-Bière.
He was planning an ambitious masterpiece.

A monumental painting, measuring four meters high and six meters wide, titled Déjeuner sur l’Herbe.
It was a massive work, intended to challenge Manet's painting of the same name.
This particular piece is a study to test the figures to be placed in that large-scale work.
Monet sought to individually record the light filtering through the trees overhead.

The models were Camille, who would later become his wife,
and Frédéric Bazille, his irreplaceable best friend.
Bazille was born into a wealthy family in the South of France and moved to Paris to study medicine, but his passion for painting was too strong to suppress, leading him to join Monet and his circle.
He generously allowed the extremely poor Monet to live in his studio and provided him with unwavering support.

That summer, too, he came to Chailly at Monet's request.
He posed repeatedly until Monet was satisfied.

However, an unexpected incident occurred.

Monet injured his leg while working outdoors.
He became immobile at a local inn.
Bazille, a medical student, took action.
He assembled an improvised traction device using pulleys and weights on the inn's bed.

And he devotedly nursed Monet.
Bazille captured the scene of his care in a painting titled An Improvised Field Hospital.