Eastman Johnson, Later Years

"Ethel Eastman Johnson Conkling with Fan"

"Despite his interest in building ties with the younger generation, Eastman Johnson was quite conscious of being very much a member of his own advancing one. He probably realized that he would never again undertake a figure subject as ambitious as 'The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket.' Under the weight of that gargantuan effort he had written: 'I am trying to get some work done. The harder I try, the more I can't.' 

 

The question as to what he would do was answered quite naturally with his very deliberate rededication to the practice of portraiture. For forty years he had made his way as an artist who aspired always to reinvent himself, but with his talents as a portraitist in great demand by a roster of eminent figures, it may have been too tempting to settle into a more predictable routine. 

 

In his later years, though he seldom chose to display it in his commissioned portrait work, Johnson continued to be capable of achieving the expressive intensity that is so strikingly apparent in his 'Old Man, Seated.' He occasionally even dipped into new aesthetic waters, as in his striking portrait of Ethel as a young woman, painted about 1895, perhaps to mark the moment of her impending marriage to Ronald Conkling in 1896. The treatment of the hands and the use of the thin veils of color in the landscape backdrop suggest that Johnson may have studied the work of Degas on one of his extended European visits."

 

"Old Man, Seated" by Eastman Johnson

 

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson: The Cranberry Harvest

"The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket" by Eastman Johnson

 
"By late September or early October in 1879, Eastman Johnson and his family had arrived in Nantucket and he began in earnest the cranberry harvest subject for which he first made studies in 1875. He wrote: 'I was taken with my cranberry fit as soon as I arrived... as they began picking down in the meadow... and I have done nothing else since I have been here, not a thing. I have no finished picture at all, maybe further off than ever.'

By mid-October he clearly was immersed in completing the exhaustive series of oil sketches that preceded his impressive finished canvas, 'The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket.' Johnson's scene was set on a coastal heath near his home. In the completed composition, the town of Nantucket lies in the distance at the left, with the Brant Point Light farther to the left, and a characteristic Nantucket windmill scenically placed nearer the center of the image. His studies for the painting are among his most visually stunning works of the decade, revealing his now superb ability to summarize the effects of natural light on moving forms and his ease in the practice of the reductive, expressive sketch.

In a number of these studies, Johnson experimented temporarily with motifs that do not appear in the final work. In his more advanced compositional studies, he experimented with various vantage points, contrasting times of day, and alternate arrangements of the figural composition. He did not easily achieve the complex arrangement of his finished canvas. A letter to a friend revealed his frustration, as well as a reluctance, to make the disruptive move back to New York at the season's close. Determined to finish, he remained on the island, with his family, well into December.

When his finished work, 'The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket,' was exhibited at the National Academy exhibition that spring, the painting was repeatedly singled out as among the finest of the more than seven hundred pictures on view. Centrally placed on a prominent wall, it was widely admired for its brilliant effects of sunlight and its naturally varied figure composition. Within a year, it was purchased by the wealthy New Yorker Auguste Richard."

A few of his studies for "Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson: Nantucket

"Husking Bee, Island of Nantucket" by Eastman Johnson

"Eastman Johnson had begun casting about for a new summer spot by June 1870, at a time when he apparently was suffering great anguish, caused at least in part by Elizabeth's apparent poor health after Ethel's birth in May. Eager to find a site near sea breezes for his wife's relief, they settled on Nantucket by early August, and within a year they had purchased a house and property on the island.

The Johnsons were among the earliest touristic arrivals and for more than two decades would be among Nantucket's most enthusiastic promoters.  By 1873 the agglomeration of old houses in which they made their home and studio, overlooking a long stretch of beach on the north shore at a high point known as the Cliff, was a feature of a lengthy article in 'Scribner's Monthly.'

Johnson was fascinated with the regional characters and also the interiors of the homes. He created paintings such as 'Old Captain,' 'What the Shell Says,' 'Susan Ray's Kitchen -  Nantucket,' 'The New Bonnet,' and 'Husking Bee, Island of Nantucket.'

"Susan Ray's Kitchen - Nantucket" by Eastman Johnson

'Husking Bee' represented his renewed attempt to complete a large, multi-figure composition set outdoors. It was his response to the younger generation of Munich Realists returning to the New York art scene. Long, opposing rows of huskers comprise a lively assortment of poses and colorful accents set against the backdrop of a moody tonal landscape and the brighter carpet of exuberantly brushed stalks.

With deliberate breadth, he described recognizable types. A sheet of beautifully executed drawings for the composition demonstrates the careful study and fine line on which he based the final, freely executed elements. Two additional sheets from the same period, done in preparation for other compositions, provide additional examples of the fine pencil work that he customarily employed to delineate heads and the broader touch that he reserved for other details."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson: Marriage

"The Toilet" by Eastman Johnson
featuring his wife Elizabeth

"Although thriving professionally, Eastman Johnson had yearned for the physical comforts and companionship of married domestic life. He finally found the partner for whom he had longed in the attractive and intelligent Elizabeth Williams Buckley whom he married in June 1859.

The daughter of a New York flour and iron merchant, Elizabeth Buckley spent her early childhood in Troy, New York. She attended the highly progressive Troy Female Seminary. In keeping with the philosophy of its founder, the academy's mission was to instill in young women a love of diverse intellectual pursuits in order to prepare them for responsible motherhood or teaching careers.

A year after their marriage, in May 1870, the Johnsons delighted in the birth of their only child, a daughter named Ethel. In 21872 they purchased a stone town house in which they would pass the length of their married life. In the relocation of his workspace to a domestic setting - a highly unusual move for an artist of Johnson's stature in New York - he approximated the Dutch tradition wherein studios were contiguous with home.

Among the most beautiful works produced by Johnson is a painting eventually titled 'Not at Home,' circa 1873, a domestic 'portrait' of his wife ascending the stairs to the second floor, leaving behind the sunlit parlor visible through an arched doorway. The fact that Elizabeth is depicted wearing a 'day dress,' appropriate for receiving visitors or making calls, indeed suggests that her 'at home' has just ended, and the presence of the little stroller next to the tall-case clock in the hallway implies her return to her child's side in the upper story of the house. Her maternal role is reiterated by the large painting, hanging in the parlor at the right, representing Johnson's own copy of a painting by Jules Breton in which a child is pulled in a rustic perambulator along the edge of a sunny field."

"Not at Home" by Eastman Johnson

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)
 

Eastman Johnson, "The Pension Claim Agent"

"The Pension Claim Agent" by Eastman Johnson

"In 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War, Eastman Johnson created a highly powerful work with 'The Pension Claim Agent.' In confronting the postwar existence of the tens of thousands of disabled veterans, he produced the most beautifully painted work of his career thus far. The painting was praised both for its subject and for its treatment, with 'grouping of the most natural kind, the drawing admirable for its truth and force and action without recourse to melodrama.'

The incident represented by Johnson was readily legible to his audience as the visit of a traveling pension agent charged with the firsthand verification of disabilities. Equally clear was the subtext of the young man's loyalty to the Union on which his eligibility for benefits was founded. While the undeniable focus of the painting is the veteran's amputated leg, Johnson offered a subtle diversion in his articulation of light on the turned heads and poised hands.

For all the enthusiasm with which it was critically received, 'The Pension Claim Agent' remained unsold for some time. It was purchased by the wealthy flour merchant Josiah Fiske by 1876 and was sold a second time to the leading collector Thomas B. Clarke by 1892. The painting nevertheless won Johnson new esteem, and at least temporarily the designation of 'the most progressive of American artists.'"

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson, Early Genre Work

Eastman Johnson "Self-Portrait"

 

"The first two decades of Eastman Johnson's New York career are often characterized as a time in which he produced a string of innovative works set against the background of routine, anecdotal genre subjects.

His first substantial efforts in that direction seemed to express the thoughts and feelings of his entire audience; pro- and antislavery supporters alike deemed his 'Negro Life at the South,' exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1859, a stunning success.

 

In Maine the following summer, he prepared a precisely composed and carefully painted rural subject titled 'Corn Husking.' He chose for a setting the barn owned by the Day family with whom he boarded, and enlisted his hosts as his models. 

 

Perhaps the most interesting detail is the inscription that he added to the weathered barn door. 'Lincoln & Hamlin,' written in large, clear script, makes reference to Maine's native son, Lincoln's running mate, Hannibal Hamlin. The rifle propped below the slogan inserted the fall's burning political debate into an otherwise placid scene. Most appropriate since six weeks after Lincoln's inauguration in March, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter and the Civil War was begun."

 

 

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson, Ojibwe Artwork

"Hiawatha," a pastel by Eastman Johnson

"Despite Eastman Johnson's successful Washington season and the promise of new work, he decided to leave the city once again in midsummer 1857 to return to Superior. He explained to his former patron Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

' One might reasonably wonder what attraction that wild region can have for an artist, in comparison with such advantages as would result to me from your kind & flattering offer, the patronage of the most celebrated in the most refined of places. Perhaps I cannot entirely justify it, but in a visit to that country last season I found so much of the picturesque, an of a character so much to my taste and in my line, that I then determined to employ this summer or a portion of it in making sketches of frontier life, a national feature of our present condition and a field for art that is full of interest and freshness and pleasing nature, and yet that has been but little treated. My chief desire is to paint pictures. In Europe I worked six or seven years with diligence and zeal to this end, sacrificing much, and my wish is that it may come to something.'

 

In Wisconsin from August 24 to October 22, Johnson executed a series of portrait heads that have come to be regarded as perhaps the most sensitive midcentury likenesses of Native Americans. His wife recalled, 'Mr. Johnson said the ancient Romans had no more patrician features nor more noble bearing than they.' 

 

The most finished composition of his sojourn is a pastel that represented a bereaved Ojibwe woman.

His stay was cut short at the end of the year when the financial panic of 1857 rendered his real estate investments worthless. His artistic plans were abruptly halted, and he left the frontier for Cincinnati to raise cash with some quick portrait commissions."

 

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson, Wisconsin

"Sarah Osgood Johnson Newton" by Eastman Johnson

"After six remarkable years abroad, Eastman Johnson sailed home on October 24th, 1855, and made his way to Washington, D.C., where he would soon reveal a determination to apply his dramatically expanded abilities to subjects that were clearly original and distinctly American. 

 

He immediately resumed portraiture and made his debut at the National Academy of Design with two pictures including a version of 'The Savoyard Boy.' By the summer of 1856, however, he was tempted away from his new artistic practice by the lure of the northwestern frontier and the possibilities that it offered for land speculation. His oldest brother, Reuben, had moved to the budding town of Superior, Wisconsin, where he had established a lumber mill. 

 

Johnson promptly made real-estate investments with his own and his father's money, and ventured into the wilder reaches of his new environment as well, setting out that winter to explore the farther shores of Lake Superior. He traveled as far as the Apostle Islands and Isle Royale in the company of a man named Stephen Bonga, a local guide of mixed Indian and African descent whose family had been active in the area's vast fur trade. 

 

Sketch of Eastman Johnson's cabin interior

They established a cabin opposite Duluth, where Johnson completed a sketch of the interior with a figure that may represent his companion. He was intrigued by the challenge of frontier life, but he had not yet decided to abandon the East completely and returned to Washington D.C."

 

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson, The Hague

"The Savoyard Boy" by Eastman Johnson

"Eastman Johnson became a painter in his own right in The Hague under the Dutch influence, and he would continue to draw inspiration from Rembrandt's light-bathed forms and expressive nuance and from the quiet intimism of rustic Dutch interiors by Dou and his own contemporary Bosboom.

 

Having made his way into the most vital community of painters at work in Holland, he found an environment that appears to have suited him in the domestic character of studio life and aesthetic reverence for humble material detail. Within this context he achieved his first successes as a painter and won the respect of Dutch and American patrons alike.

 

He made progress toward achieving increased facility in his figure painting with several versions of a composition known as 'The Savoyard Boy.' The subject, generally popular in European painting of the period, represented one of the many young boys of the Savoy region of the Italian Alps who commonly eked out meager livings as traveling street performers of chimney sweeps. The full-figure version was described as his 'first original and elaborate work in oil.'

 

Johnson's intended four months in The Hague became four years, during which he found the artistic practice and aesthetic that he would eventually adopt as his own. It is hardly surprising that in paraphrasing Johnson's own comments on his Dutch stay, his experience was one of 'unexpected opportunities.'"

 

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

 

Eastman Johnson, Dutch Influences

"Christmas-Time, the Blodgett Family" by Eastman Johnson

"After a brief visit in England, Eastman John went on to the Netherlands, and by November had decided to stay on through the winter at The Hague, where he wrote: 'I find I am deriving much advantage from studying the splendid works of Rembrandt and a few other of the old Dutch masters, who I find are only to be seen in Holland.'

Having come to Holland for the find pictures, Johnson would have lost little time in making his way to the Mauritshuis, the grand mansion purchased by the state in 1820 to house the Royal Cabinet of Paintings, established by the newly installed King Willem I eight years earlier. The opening of the museum in 1822 was a source of great national pride, given that much of the collection had been looted at the time of the French occupation of Holland in 1794 and were returned only in 1815.

Johnson was amazed and deeply inspired by Rembrandt, and equally moved by the great seventeenth-century genre painters: Gerrit Dou, Gabriel Metsu, Frans van Mieris, Gerard Ter Borch, and Jan Steen. These may have conveyed to Johnson the evocative power of understated narrative and the expressive potential of well-worn utilitarian objects.

Brooms, baskets, pots and bowls, and vegetables would make frequent appearances in his later narrative subjects, always in the context of the humble, half-lit interiors in which essential family life was enacted. It is hardly surprising that a mid-nineteenth-century American would gravitate to such seemingly 'realistic' subjects rather than religious or historical themes remote from his previous cultural experience."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson, Studies in Dusseldorf

Eastman Johnson's copy of Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware"

"By the summer of 1849, Eastman Johnson and an artist friend, George Henry Hall, had determined to further their training in a foreign academy. The advocacy of the Dusseldorf Academy by Hall's patron appears to have been convincing enough for the two to apply there.

He also began studies under American artist Emanuel Leutze in an immense atelier which Leutze rented with two others beside himself forming an atmosphere and an aspect of art not less delightful than it is improving,' and he added, 'I regret now that I have not been with him during my entire stay in Dusseldorf.' 

 

The large picture on which Leutze was at work was a second version of 'Washington Crossing the Delaware, the first having been damaged in a studio fire the previous November. While Leutze painted the full-scale canvas with the assistance of such atelier members as Andreas Achenbach and the young American Worthington Whittredge, Johnson devoted his energies to the production of a smaller replica to be used in the production of an engraving. The project was surely the most significant of Johnson's Dusseldorf experience, linking the young student to one of the most celebrated productions of his widely recognized master.

 

Johnson found progress in his art hard won. He wrote: 'I am painting away with men companions and very diligently, trying to get the hang of it, which I find I assure you no easy matter. I do nothing in my old way of crayons.' In March he was already setting his sights on a move and was talking of Paris. He also mentioned the possibility of traveling 'to see the fine pictures of Holland. Since Leutze was also leaving Germany for the States, there was nothing to hold Johnson in Germany."

 

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson, The Longfellow Commissions

"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow" by Eastman Johnson

"Rising young poet and author and Harvard professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow invited Eastman Johnson to Cambridge to execute a group of portrait heads. His first sitting was in the artist's new studio in Amory Hall in Boston. After a total of three sittings, Longfellow, who by all reports was quite conscious of appearances and fashion, was pleased with the handsome and lively portrait. 

 

It appears that four days later, while visiting Nathaniel Hawthorne, Longfellow proposed that he also sit for Johnson. In an effort to further his project of collecting the heads of his most admired friends and colleagues, Longfellow next wrote to Ralph Waldo Emerson: 'When you are next in Boston, pray take the trouble to step into Johnson's room and see the portrait of Hawthorne he is making for me.' 

 

Emerson also agreed to sit for Johnson, who remarked of the philosopher and writer, 'No one ever impressed me so as being a perfectly spiritual man, in mind, appearance and manner. His aspect was gentle and lovely... and every look, every word, every action was a s beautiful as could be conceived." 

 

In December he also completed the head of Charles Sumner, which was described as 'most excellent.' There were three additional commissions, and installed in Longfellow's newly arranged study, the portraits represented the heady circle that the young artist had entered, albeit tangentially."

 

Longfellow's collection: https://www.eastmanjohnson.org

 

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson, Washington DC

Portrait of Dolley Madison by Eastman Johnson

"In the tradition of early nineteenth-century 'face-painters,' Eastman Johnson appears to have moved from town to town in southern Maine to execute the portraits with which he first earned his reputation. A writer for the 'Portland Advertiser' noted the rapid rise of this 'very promising young artist' and remarked, 'Considering the extreme simplicity of [Johnson's] process, for he uses only black crayon, with a very little white for lights, the results are extraordinary.'

When his father assumed the position of chief clerk in the Navy Department's Bureau of Construction, Equipment, and Repair, he went to Washington with his family. During this time he made contact with a roster of famous sitters. By March 1846 he counted the famous Dolley Madison and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton among the notables whose portraits he had drawn.

In a recollection fifty years later, he wrote: 'Mrs. Madison wandered in of her own accord and I asked her to let me make a sketch of her to which she readily assented. It was a perfectly good likeness and a pretty frowsy old lady she was. I value it very much and would not be willing to have it go out of my possession..." 

He also told his father, "I take pleasure in going every morning to her house. She comes in at ten o0clock in full dress. She looks quite imposing with her white satin turban and black velvet dress and a countenance so full of benignity and gentleness. Today she was telling me of Lafayette, Mr. Jefferson, and others.'

 To be continued

 (Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)

Eastman Johnson, Artistic Leanings

"The Old Stagecoach" by Eastman Johnson

 "Eastman Johnson (1824-1906) had the good fortune to be born in a setting for which he felt an early and deep affinity. The town of Lovell, Maine, lies inland in the shadow of the White Mountain foothills. It was here that Johnson took his first tentative steps as a portrait artist and established the ties with native son Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that would lead to some of his most important portrait commissions.

The aspiring young artist first sought to sharpen his rudimentary skills about 1840, when he found employment in a Boston lithography shop. Boston's blossoming art circles must have been a revelation to the young Johnson. Leading Boston portraitist and gallery owner Chester Harding; Francis Alexander, who rendered a portrait of Charles Dickens during the writer's visit to the city early in 1842; and the great Washington Allston, elderly dean of Boston painters until his death in 1843, all participated in the formation of the Boston Artists' Association and the organization of its first annual exhibition.

Young and inexperienced, Johnson may have found the competition in Boston too stiff, for he returned to Augusta, Maine, in 1842 and set out to establish his reputation on more familiar ground."

To be continued...

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)
 

Fantin's Wife, Victoria Dubourg, Pt. 11

Portrait of Victoria Dubourg by Edgar Degas

"Victoria Dubourg, Henri Fantin-Latour's wife, trained privately in the studio of artist Fanny Chéron (born 1830) and established her independent practice in Paris by the early 1860s. Archival records place Dubourg at the Louvre in 1866, when she received an 800 franc commission from the Ministry of Fine Arts to execute a replica of Pietro da Cortona’s 17th-century painting 'Virgin and Child with Saint Martina.'

This assignment coincided with an extensive arts initiative undertaken during the reign of Napoleon III to expand and reorganize the Louvre’s collection. As part of the state’s oversight, the institution’s holdings were copied and sent to churches and administrative offices throughout the country. Dubourg later fulfilled a similar request to copy Titian’s 'Pilgrims of Emmaus,' 16th or 17th century, no doubt granting her some financial independence to study and copy artworks in the Louvre’s collection for her own personal development.

 

The Louvre provided a gateway to art history outside the confines of a formal educational body. This proved advantageous to emerging female artists like Dubourg, who were not eligible for admission into the École des Beaux-Arts until 1897. Crucially, the museum also provided a rare forum for women - whose training was typically conducted in a very private setting - to form connections with fellow artists whom they painted alongside.

 

In 1869 Dubourg met her future husband and collaborator, Henri Fantin-Latour, while both were copying Correggio’s 'The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.' Perhaps their encounter was inevitable, as both socialized with a circle of progressive artists that frequented the museum, including Édouard Manet (1832–1883), a guest at their 1875 nuptials, Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), and Edgar Degas (1834–1917).

 

Modern study of Dubourg’s production has been somewhat limited and has often explored her biography through that of her husband, whose works Dubourg fastidiously documented in a catalogue raisonné published in 1918, seven years after Fantin’s death. They shared a studio space at 8 Rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris and together sourced fresh blooms to paint from the family estate in Buré, Normandy (which Dubourg inherited from an uncle).

 

"Flowers" by Victoria Dubourg

 

Though Dubourg and Fantin-Latour developed a similar style from working side by side, Dubourg signed the prodigious number of pictures she displayed at the annual Paris Salon and other international art exhibitions with her maiden name, perhaps in an effort to hold on to a discrete artistic identity.

Victoria Dubourg exhibited at the Salon in Paris from 1869, then at the Salon of French artists and at the Royal Academy in London, of which she was a member like her husband. In Paris, she obtained an honorable mention in 1894 and a medal in 1895. She was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1920."

 

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Dubourg)

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 10

"The Discouraged Artist" by Henri Fantin-Latour

 "One gets a much more favourable idea of Henri Fantin-Latour's powers as a draughtsman, from his abundant output as a lithographer. There are more than 190 of these lithographs, only six or seven of which treat 'realist' subjects. His first lithographs were made in 1862, but he did not turn seriously to the medium until 1873. After this he continued to use it enthusiastically for the rest of his career.

The initial impulse to resume making prints came from the Schumann celebration which was held at Bonn in 1873. Fantin had loved Schumann's music ever since he first heard it on his first visit to England in 1861, and it occurred to him to produce a lithograph as a form of personal tribute. The result was 'To the Memory of Robert Schumann,' the first in a whole series of prints on musical themes.

His musical pantheon was extremely restricted. His two chief gods were Wagner and Berlioz, and to them he dedicated nearly half his entire lithographic output. There are also further tributes to Schumann, and others to Brahms, Weber and Rossini.

He seems to have used the medium as a means of trying out ideas which would afterwards be translated into something larger and more ambitious - in pastel or in oil. His usual practice was to draw on transfer paper. The lithograph would then be pulled in two states - the first to show the design after the process of transfer had been completed; the second after retouches had been made directly on the stone. Other artists did not fail to note the range and subtlety of the effects he was able to achieve.

(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 9

Henri Fantin-Latour's "La Féerie"

"The two most important of Henri Fantin-Latour's early imaginative compositions are 'La Féerie' of 1863 and the 'Tannhauser on the Venusberg' of 1864. The rejection of 'La Féerie' by the Salon jury seems genuinely to have changed the whole direction of his career. It convinced him, almost at a stroke, that he would never make a success as a painter with the large-scaled figure pieces on which he had probably set his heart. In traditional fashion, he must have believed in 'history painting' was intrinsically the noblest of the genres. 

 

From 1864 onwards when he was content to paint flower pieces and still lifes and nothing else, though gradually towards the end of his life, the number of imaginative compositions began to increase. Is there anything to regret about the fact that his career was turned aside by circumstances? Did he have the makings of a great, or even of a considerable, imaginative painter? The answer to these questions, despite his importance as a symbolist forerunner, must surely be 'no'. 

 

The training in drawing and painting from memory which Fantin had received in his youth did enable him to find forms in his mind which would at least approximately embody the vision he wished to make visible for other people; but increasingly his recollection had become stocked not with living bodies and real landscapes, but with the painted simulation of those things which he had long gazed at in the Louvre.

 

His imaginative works were often inspired by his great love of music and he created several paintings based on the operas of Richard Wagner. Fantin-Latour increasingly explored lithography as a testing ground for his fantastical works."

 

(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 8

"Portrait of Leon Maitre" by Fantin-Latour

 
"Henri Fantin-Latour did not consider himself to be a really good portrait painter, because he found it difficult to reconcile himself to sitters whom he did not know intimately. He painted many self-portraits, making a remark about them which has often been quoted: 'It is a model who is always ready and it offers all sorts of advantages; it is exact, submissive, and one knows it before painting it.'

This summarizes his attitude towards sitters in general: on the one hand he wanted people who, in his terms, would 'pose well,' as passively and uncomplainingly as bowls of fruit and vases of flowers; and on the other he needed a certain intimacy of friendship. It is for this reason that the majority of his portraits are of members of his family, or else of close friends, such as Manet, Leon Maitre and Adolphe Jullien."

In general, Fantin's self-portraits are something of a psychological puzzle. Most are small, and the majority date from the earlier part of the artist's career. Yet they do not seem to be repeated acts of self-interrogation. Rather, we get a hint of the truth in Fantin's own statement about them, which suggests that his own face in a mirror was something he could look at as objectively as he did an apple on a plate. But one or two hint at a sudden unease about the act of confrontation which would be all of a piece with his notorious social timidity."

To be continued...

 
(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 7

"Narcisses in an Opaline Glass Vase" by Fantin-Latour

 

 "Henri Fantin-Latour's flower paintings have a special quality which is well summed up in Jacques-Emile Blanche's description of them: 'Fantin studied each flower, its grain, its tissue, as if it were a human face.'" 

"The pictures of flowers were, for the most part, painted in an atmosphere rather different from that which prevailed in Fantin's Paris studio. His wife had a small country property at Bure in Lower Normandy, and it was there that the couple went every June, after the excitement of the Salon was over. Fantin, who liked old, rather neglected cottage gardens, was there able to make a wide choice of summer blooms." 

"The flowers he painted cover almost the whole range available to the not too ambitious mid- and late-nineteenth century gardener. They occur in mixed bunches, as vases or sprays of one variety only, and occasionally as single blooms laid on some surface. The flower which occurs most often is the rose, usually the large, opulent varieties which were then especially liked. There is an emphasis on whites, yellows, and pinks, and on pastel shades in general, perhaps chosen because of their luminosity." 

"In his own lifetime Fantin was renowned for his skill in arranging his bouquets, and almost the best known anecdote about him is the one which concerns the lady who wanted to take lessons from him, not in painting but in flower arrangement." 

To be continued...

(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 6

"Snapdragons" by Fantin-Latour

 "Although Henri Fantin-Latour lived on till 1904, the last two really formative events in his life took place a quarter of a century previously in 1876."

First, and apparently on impulse when he was suddenly offered some tickets, he travelled to Bayreuth to hear some of the first performances of Wagner's completed 'Ring Cycle.' Secondly, in November of the same year, he married Mlle Dubourg, [whom he had met while copying the same painting, 'The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine,' at the Louvre some years earlier]. "

"As the years went by he became more and more reluctant to venture out of his own habitual environment, until at last not even the prospect of a Wagner performance at the Opera would tempt him to endure the discomforts of a large public gathering."

"Though music still played a large part in stimulating his creative imagination, he was content to rely on memories of what he had heard, refreshed by the piano transcriptions which were sometimes played by friends."

To be continued...

(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 5

"Poppies," 23.6" x 20.94" (60 cm x 53.2 cm)
in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia

 "1870 marks a distinct break in Henri Fantin-Latour's career - a thing true of many other people in France, though Fantin was more fortunate than most. He lived through the siege of Paris and then, before the bloody fighting of the Commune had broken out, received a visit from Edwin Edwards, who promptly took a great deal of unsold work off his hands and thus enabled him to survive the crisis financially."

"It proved to be the beginning of a more definite and regular business arrangement with Edwards and his wife which gave Fantin, if not riches, then at least a kind of financial security which was unknown to many of his contemporaries. The Edwards saw to it that Fantin was regularly shown at the Royal Academy and this helped to build up his growing English reputation."

"At the same time, though at first only very gradually, Fantin started to withdraw from the kind of artistic life which had hitherto nourished him. Not that he was ready to leave it altogether, though it is significant that his two final group portraits represent, not painters, but in the one case writers, and in the other musicians."

"The last group portrait, 'Around the Piano,' was not painted until 1885. The composer Emmanuel Chabrier sits at the keyboard, and around him are grouped a number of other men who belonged to the 'Wagnerian' wing of the Paris musical world. By the time this was painted, Fantin's manner of life had almost completely changed, and he was a fully accepted and respected academic artist who had been awarded the Legion of Honour in 1879."

"Around the Piano" by Henri Fantin-Latour

To be continued...

 
(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 4

Fantin-Latour's portrait of "Édouard Manet"
in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

 "Perhaps because Henri Fantin-Latour was still undergoing so many formative creative experiences, he remained very unsure of his own direction as an artist. He made the experiment of studying for a month at Courbet's 'School of Realism' in the latter's studio in rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, but did not like it and left."

"Hals inspired Fantin's 'Homage to Delacroix,' a group portrait. Plus Manet was much in Fantin's mind at this period. The two of them belonged to a group which also included Baudelaire, Bazille, Renoir, Edmond Maitre and the politician Gambetta."  

"Homage to Delacroix" by Fantin-Latour. At the centre of the
composition is a 'picture within a picture' - the portrait
of Delacroix himself. Around him are grouped the young
or youngish admirers of this genius who represented a
romanticism whose force was now nearly spent:
Whistler, Fantin himself, the critic Duranty, the painters
Alphonse Legros and Louis Cordier, then Campfleury,
Baudelaire, Manet, Bracquemond and the painter Albert de Balleroy.

From 1866 onwards Fantin was often to be seen at the Cafe Guerbois where those who were afterwards to be dubbed Impressionists gathered and where Manet was very much the focus of attention. In 1867 Fantin created a sensation at the Salon, and raised his own reputation to a new plane, by showing his elegantly combative portrait of Manet, which was admired even by those who detested both what the subject stood for, and the fashion in which he painted."

"The immediate result was a small mis-step in Fantin's own career. The picture brought him the commission for a massive family group of the aristocratic Fitz-James family, but he found he had bitten off more than he could chew and was unable to complete it."
 

To be continued...

(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 3

 

Fantin-Latour's 1859 rejected entry into the
Paris Salon, "Portrait of Mademoiselle Marie Fantin-Latour."

 "At this time, the only route to professional success as a painter was through the Paris Salon, and in 1859 Henri Fantin-Latour made his first attempt to gain admission, sending in three pictures: one a self-portrait, one a portrait of his sister reading, and another of both sisters, one doing embroidery and the other busy with a book. All three were rejected."

"In 1859, Fantin also took another important step - at Whistler's insistence, he paid his first visit to London. Fantin was never an enthusiastic traveler, though he was to visit London twice again, in 1861 and 1864. Surprisingly enough, however, he liked the English food and thought the women beautiful though they dressed without taste. He went to the National Gallery, where he particularly admired the Velazquez of 'Philip IV Hunting Wild Boar.' Later visits were to bring him, besides a wider English acquaintanceship, the first stirrings of his passion for music. It was in London that he first encountered the work of Schumann, a composer who became one of his favourites."

In 1861 Fantin had his first success at the Salon. One of the pictures which was hung was the portrait of a young English painter called W.M. Ridley, to whom he had been introduced by Whistler. Ridley, in turn, made Fantin known to some English friends of his own, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Edwards. The wife took it on herself to be Fantin's agent and propagandist across the Channel. She had great success in selling the artist's flower paintings, which in consequence remained virtually unknown in France."

To be continued...

(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 2

A Fantin-Latour copy of Veronese's "The Marriage at Cana."
169.9 x 250 cm (66.88" x 98.42")
His favorite painting at the Louvre, and he made no less than five copies!

Veronese's "The Marriage at Cana"
6.77 m × 9.94 m (267 in × 391 in)

 

"Although Henri Fantin-Latour was a successful pupil both at his first school of drawing and under Lecoq-de-Boisbaudran, he was a failure at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Admitted as a competitor in February 1854, he lasted for only three months, since those who judged the competitions in which all the pupils took part thought he was making no progress."

"For the rest of his artistic education he was forced to rely on the pictures he saw in the Louvre, where for twelve years he was an assiduous copyist, sometimes working for his own instruction and sometimes on commission. Even after he had begun to establish himself professionally, the Louvre continued to fascinate him, and he went on making copies there until about 1870."

"Through his work in the Louvre Fantin made many friendships, one of which was with the young and elegant Frederick Leighton, later to be Lord Leighton and President of the Royal Academy, whose Paris studio was already a rendezvous for fashionable people, and who was to help Fantin to get commissions from wealthy members of the Greek community in London. Another new acquaintance was Carolus Duran. However, his most significant encounters were with Manet, Berthe Morisot and Whistler."

To be continued...

(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)
 

Henri Fantin-Latour, Pt. 1

Self-Portrait by Fantin-Latour, 1861
9.8" (25 cm) x 8.4" (21.4 cm)

 "Henri Fantin-Latour's life story is not dramatic. He was born at Grenoble on 14 January 1836, the son of a French father and a Russian mother. In 1841, when Fantin was five, his family moved to Paris. The boy drew from his earliest years, and when he was ten his father began his regular education as an artist.

"His method was to set his son to copying various engravings and lithographs, many of them after paintings by the neoclassical artist Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson. When he was fourteen, Fantin joined a professional drawing school, though he was some months younger than the official age of admission.

"At this school he met a pupil called Solon, and through Solon began to attend the classes given by a certain Lecoq-de-Boisbaudran. Lecoq-de-Boisbaudran was a gifted teacher who also numbered Rodin, Tissot, Legros and Lhermitte among his pupils.

"The peculiarity of his instructional method was that he insisted that his pupils drew, not from life, but from memory. The model was posed, and the teacher pointed out its salient features, the divisions of light and shade, and so forth. Later, when the model was no longer present, the pupils were asked to reproduce what they had seen and understood."

To be continued...

(Excerpts are from "Henri Fantin-Latour" by Edward Lucie-Smith.)