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.)