Manet and His Easel

• Jean-Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870)
• 1868–1870 (?)
• Charcoal and white chalk on laid paper
• Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
• (1975.1.569)

A neatly dressed man in a top hat stands confidently before an easel, brush in hand. He is thought to be Edouard Manet, the modern painter whose daring works in the early 1860s shocked the Parisian art World. Jean-Frédéric Baqzille a central figure among the artists who gathered around Manet and later became known as the Impressionists, captured in this drawing a sense of friendship and admiration for his colleague.