Exercise #16 – Answers

Q.1. Describe what you see in this painting.

A.1. This painting shows a young man (black hair, beard and moustache), lying on a crumpled, untidy wooden bed. His left leg has a red coloured injury to the shin which is resting on a folded fur rug. The right leg is presumably covered by the bedclothes. The bed is surrounded by a half opened off-white curtain canopy. His flushed cheeks are framed by his black hair and the large cream-coloured pillow. The patient looks at us (and the painter) with a resigned expression on his face.

There is a small white jug with white flowers on a bedside wooden locker to the right of the bed. The floor is made of old dark brown/red terracotta tiles. The surrounding walls are covered by dark yellow-coloured wallpaper with a floral pattern. There is a medium-sized round wooden barrel hanging by two ropes from the canopy on the patient’s right side. There are also a metal bucket containing dark liquid and a ceramic orange/brown bowl on the floor at the end of the bed on the left. On the extreme right of the painting, there is the shadowed outline of a figure.

Q.2. What age is the man lying in the bed? Give reasons.

A.2. He is a young man in his mid-to-late twenties because his hair, moustache and beard are black with no sign of grey. He also does not have any age lines on his face or hands.

Q.3. Why do you think he is in bed? Who might the shadowed figure represent?

A.3. He is recovering from an injury to his left shin. The most likely person in the painter.

Q.4. Where is he? What is the purpose of the objects depicted?

A.4. He does not appear to be in a hospital judging by the bed canopy, wallpaper, the wooden bed, the fur rug, the improvised barrel hoist, and domestic bucket and bowl on the floor. It could be his home.

Note: Note: The secondary title of this painting gives us clearer information: Monet after his Accident at the Inn at Chailly. Claude Monet (1840-1926), one of the founders of Impressionism and Frédéric Bazille (1841-1870) were friends. Bazille had a limited artistic education and had studied medicine for a while at the request of his parents. Monet invited Bazille to join him at Chailly, near Fontainbleau. While there Monet was injured by a flying metal disc thrown in a game by students. Bazille improvised, using his medical knowledge, to treat the wound in the hotel. Bazille was killed in the Franco-Prussian war at the age of 29 years. His style was a mixture of Realism and Impressionism but he never exhibited with the Impressionists, a break-away group of French artists who wanted to paint outdoors to capture the fleeting qualities of light using short brushstrokes and a bright palette. Their first exhibition was held in 1874.