All Frédéric Bazille's drawings, gouaches, watercolors and pastels
About thirty drawings by Frédéric Bazille are known (apart from the albums in the Orsay Museum preserved in the Département des Arts graphiques of the Louvre Museum and detailed in the albums section of this catalogue) that it is possible to date. The first ones are obviously academies made at the time of Bazille's stay at the Gleyre studio in 1863. Others are clearly preparatory drawings, which makes it possible to date them precisely. Watercolors, gouache and pastels such as his Family Portrait and the Man with Pipe will also be found in this corpus. One will be surprised, however, to find here only a limited number of drawings knowing that Gleyre gave drawings top priority. Finally, a number of drawings and a pastel could not be located. Since Bazille rarely signed them, it is possible that a number of them are lost. These are probably caricatures done at the Gleyre studio; a pastel executed in Honfleur, a survivor of the disaster that occurred in Bazille's luggage on his return to Paris; and preparatory drawings for Ruth and Booz. Will they reemerge some day?
