Girl in a Pink Dress

This painting combines a portrait-like depiction of Bazille’s cousin, Th�r�se des Hours, who is seen from behind and the sunlit landscape at which she gazes.

Bazille was combining a new approach to figural work with energetic attention to colour values in the open. On two occasions, four years apart (in 1864 and 1868), he tackled open-air portraiture, doing a young woman dressed in light colours, with a view of the village of Castelnau-le-Lez rising upon a gentle slope in the background. The 1868 painting was exhibited at the Salon the following year.