Portrait of Renoir

Painted in 1867 and now at the Cleveland Museum of Art, this portrait of Renoir is one of two companion friendship portraits exchanged between Bazille and Renoir that year, the other being Renoir's portrait of Bazille in the same collection and period. The works document the especially close friendship between the two young artists, who had trained together under Gleyre and shared both studio space and financial hardship in the late 1860s. Bazille's relative wealth from his Montpellier family enabled him to help Renoir directly, and the mutual portrait exchange was a form of reciprocal tribute within that friendship.

Renoir is posed informally, in a characteristic Bazille approach to portraiture that eschews formal staging. The handling of the face is careful and probing, while the broader background receives looser brushwork. The overall effect is of a genuine and attentive study rather than a ceremonial likeness.