Baptistin Baille was born as Jean-Baptiste Baille in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, in 1841 and he died in 1918. He was a professor of

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...

and

acoustics Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician ...

at the

École de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education Secondary education or post-primary education covers two phases on the International Standard Classification of Education scal ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

and a close friend of

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

, the impressionist artist, and of

Émile Zola Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, also , ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of ...

who would later become a writer.

"Les trois inséparables"

Together, they were known as "les trois inséparables" (the three inseparables). The three boys met when they were at school and often swam together at the River Arc. Cézanne produced numerous paintings of male bathers based on these experiences, which Zola also remembered in his novel, ''

L'Œuvre ''L'Œuvre'' is the fourteenth novel in the '' Rougon-Macquart'' series by Émile Zola. It was first serialized in the periodical ''Gil Blas'' beginning in December 1885 before being published in novel form by Charpentier in 1886. The title, t ...

'', Another friend and classmate was Louis Marguery, future lawyer and writer for vaudeville.National Gallery of Art timeline, retrieved February 11, 2009
/ref>

References

Sources

Brown, F. 1984. Zola and Cézanne: The early years. New Criterion 3:15–29. 19th-century French scientists 1841 births 1918 deaths French academics {{France-academic-bio-stub