Self-Portrait
by FANTIN-LATOUR, Henri, Oil on canvas, 103 x 72 cm
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.