FANTIN-LATOUR, Henri

In this large painting, exhibited at the 1870 Salon, artists and writers are grouped around Manet, leader of the so-called Batignolles school. The figure apparently sitting for his portrait is Zacharie Astruc, while the five men behind him are recognizable as (from the left) Renoir, Zola, Edmond Maître, Bazille, and Monet. The man behind Manet is Otto Scholderer. The spherical vase was made by Laurent Bouvier (1840-1901), one of the earliest Japanese-influenced potters in Paris. It was included in the painting as a symbol of the interest that the most modern artists were now taking in Japanese art, alongside with a statue of the Greek goddess Minerva, standing for reason and truth.

Fantin-Latour’s painting does not fall within a particular style. His portraits and still-lifes are decidedly Realist (he spent a period as a pupil of Courbet), whereas his mythological paintings are closer to academic painting, but with hints of Symbolism.

Fantin-Latour produced a type of still-life and flower piece in which he created composition of great volume and dynamism through his use of light. In this vase of chrysanthemums, a theatrical light falling from the left highlights the yellows and reds of the blooms against the totally black background.

In this still-life the painter shows a bouquet of flowers without showing the vase or pot in which it stands. This was an allusive method that Japanese printmakers loved. The works of almost contemporary Japanese artists, such as Utagawa Kunisada and Katsushika Hokusai, were the first to reach the West and influenced painters in Paris.

This painting is the first in a series of pictures that Fantin-Latour painted of friends, which, along with his delicate still-lifes of flowers was to bring him fame. It was painted one year after the death of Delacroix, who appears as a portrait in the centre of the picture, honoured by a bouquet of flowers placed in front of it. Fantin-Latour painted the portrait from a photograph that had been published ten years previously.

The ten painters and critics who have gathered to pay their respects to Delacroix are, from left to right, Louis Cordier, the critic Edmond Duranty, Alphonse Legros, the artist himself (the only figure appearing in his shirt-sleeves, palette in hand), followed by Whistler, Champfleury, Edouard Manet, F�lix Braquemond, the poet Charles Baudelaire, and Albert de Balleroy.

This self-portrait, painted when the artist was twenty-two, shows him in unkempt garb, his hair ungroomed, a character straight out of Henri Murger’ Sc�nes de la Vie Boh�me (1847). As he won prosperity, Fantin-Latour turned to a sleeker, smoother manner with which he won countless commissions from wealthy English and French patrons for his exquisite still-lifes and increasingly boring portraiture.

This group picture brought together several writers, namely Paul Verlain, Arthur Rimbaud, Elz�ar Bonnier, L�on Valade, �mile Bl�mont, Jean Aicard, Ernst d’Hervilly, and Camille Pelletan. Originally Fantin was planning a companion piece to his Hommage à Delacroix, which was to feature Baudelaire, the influential writer, at its centre. This plan gradually receded in favour of a rather informal grouping of literary figures around a table.

This late group portrait became famous because of its authentic portrayal of Verlaine and Rimbaud, who are sitting on the left-hand side of the table in the foreground.