Black woman with peonies, c.1870 (w/c, gouache, chalk & graphite on card)

This composition relates closely to a painting of the same title in the Musée Fabre, Montpelier. It is likely to have been painted in the first months of 1870, at which time Bazille had engaged 'une négresse superbe' as a model for three paintings which preoccupied him at this time: the Montpellier painting, another composition on the same theme, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and a painting which he planned to submit to the Salon that year, 'La Toilette', also now in the Musée Fabre. The Montpelier painting has been identified as that which Bazille planned to execute for his sister-in-law, Suzanne.