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.)