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.)