Henri Fantin-Latour

1836 - 1904 • French • Painter • Academic/Impressionist Circle

"I am giving a lot of thought to a large painting ... showing Manet, at the center, painting at his easel, his model posing in front of him, the two of them surrounded by friends, acquaintances, a lot of people in the studio. This strikes me as a -fine, picturesque motif " - Henri Fantin-Latour

Fantin-Latour received his artistic training from his father, starting at the age of 10. He also studied with a little-known teacher, Lecoq de Boisbaudran, whose unusual instruction method was to focus on the development of memory, insisting that students concentrate on essentials and details and then reproduce images from memory. To that end Lecoq sent his students to copy masters at the Louvre, a practice that Fantin Latour continued for many year s. Fantin - Latour met and befriended both MANET and WHISTLER at the Louvre. He painted STILL LIFE flowers with meticulous attention to each petal. On e composition, The Betrothal Still Life (1869), he presented to his fiancee, whom he did not marry until I 876. The picture Fantin-Latour is musing about in the quotation above is Studio in the Batignolles (1870), a large group portrait set in an unusually elegant studio inhabited by eight gentlemen in suits, waistcoats, jackets-one even wears a hat. The cast of characters includes Manet seated at the easel painting a portrait; also present are RENOIR, Emile Zola, BAZILLE, and MONET. Renoir is placed so that his head is enclosed by a picture frame that hangs on the wall behind him. Absent are DEGAS, who probably declined the opportunity, and Fantin-Latour himself, who was the least avant-garde among the painters with whom he associated-working among IMPRESSIONISTS, he remained true to tradition in his own paintings. The work is also widely known as Homage to Manet, and it was favorably received at the SALON of 1870. Later in his career Fantin-Latour became quite experimental in his musical evocations, especially the operas of Richard Wagner.