Black Woman with Peonies

Both paintings are oil on canvas, with one version on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the other on view at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France.

The Washington painting depicts a Black woman with a bundle of peonies in her hand, staring directly at the viewer with a basket of flowers in her other arm.

In this series of paintings, Bazille modernizes the portrayal of the Parisian working class, marking a shift towards representing all demographics of city life in art at the time.

The woman in Bazille's paintings is depicted conducting a mundane task in a way that does not exoticize her; whether a housekeeper or a florist, her occupation is left to the viewer's imagination.

[2] The art historian Denise Murrell has suggested, however, that Bazille may "re-Orientalize" the woman through the juxtaposition with flowers, linking her with earth, nature, and the primitive.

[1] Upon moving to Paris in the 1860s, Bazille quickly befriended other Impressionist artists including Claude Monet, Pierre- Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Manet.