Category Archive

The painting, “Scène d’été” (aka “Summer Scene” or “The Bathers”) by French impressionist Frédéric Bazille, caught the internet’s attention after an X user posted it with the caption, “sort of insane to me that this was painted in 1869.”

Indeed, Bazille’s depiction of eight scantily clad men having a lakeside day of fun in the sun feels weirdly modern — maybe because the men’s poses look straight out of a gay guy’s vacation photodump on Instagram.

Naturally, gays across the internet wondered if Bazille was one of us. As for many famous folks in his era, there’s no concrete proof of Bazille’s sexuality, but he was never in a relationship with a woman and had an apparent obsession with painting nude or barely clothed men. “Scène d’été” is debatably not even his most homoerotic work; just look at “The Fisherman with a Net” (above). Read on…