description

Henri Fantin-Latour (Grenoble 1836 - Buré 1904)

Signed and dated top left: Fantin Oct. 1861

Provenance

- Private collection, Europe
- Galerie Hopkins-Custot, Paris, 2004: exhibited at TEFAF.
- Private collection, Belgium
- Douwes Fine Art, Amsterdam, 2023

Literature

- Mme Fantin-Latour, Catalogue de l'oeuvre complet de Fantin-Latour, Paris, 1911, no. 184 on page 26.

Detail Description

Fantin-Latour is widely celebrated for a series of sumptuous, exquisitely detailed, flower pieces and still lifes. He produced many other important works however, notably several prestigious group portraits of contemporary artists and writers. His group portraits now stand as vital historical documents given that they brought together many key figures associated with the rise of the French avant-garde, including Ingres, Delacroix, Carot, Manet and Baudelaire. However, and though he was closely associated with the troupe, Fantin-Latour remained something of an outsider inasmuch as his own art had its roots in eighteenth-century Dutch Golden Age painting. Though an artist firmly rooted in the Realist tradition, he was still willing to explore a more expressive palette through his forays into mythical narratives based on important operatic works. In his late period, Fantin-Latour took his interest in opera further by bringing performance narratives to life through a series of finely executed lithographs.