Henri-Jean-Theodore Fantin-Latour (Kunst)

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Henri-Jean-Theodore (1836-1904) studied with his father Jean-Theodore Fantin-Latour from 1846 and then with Horace Lecocq de Boisbaudran at the Petite Ecole de Dessin inParisfrom 1850 to 1856. He had a growing enthusiasm for the Italian painters, particularly Titian and Veronese, whom he would copy while in the Louvre in 1852. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1854, but he left before the end of the year. By the time he met Gustave Courbet two directions were clearly defined in his art, Realism and fantasy. For several months in 1861 he was a pupil in Courbet’s studio, but he did not follow the strict realism that Courbet encouraged.

He exhibited at the Salon des Refuges with the Impressionists whom he established contact with through his friendship with Edouard Manet, but he refused to exhibit with them in 1874 at Nadar’s studio. Fantin-Latour’s aesthetic is hard to define. He rejected the anecdotal aspect of genre, but had the same sensitivity to light effects that the Impressionists investigated. Instead of going out into nature he cut flowers and would bring them indoors to paint in the studio. Like his friends he had a taste for modern life and contemporary scenes.

From 1864, he began exhibiting group portraits, which brought together avant-garde painters and writers. During the Siege of Paris and the Commune (1871), Fantin-Latour gave up portraiture for more literary pursuits. From 1870 his subject matter was punctuated with such mythological scenes as Dana, Auroas, and nymphs. He was filled by the spirit of Romanticism, and along with it the music of contemporary German composers such as Richard Wagner. Music provided a reservoir of ideas in which Fantin-Latour’s escapism could find imaginative expression; he found a dreaming idealistic side of life that he did not find in contemporary society.
•Alencon
•Amiens (Musee de Picardie)
•Anvers, Berlin-Germany
•Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania
•Bruselles
•Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
•E.G. Buhrle Collection, Zurich
•Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco
•Florence-Italy
•Hermitage, St. Petersburg
•London National Art Gallery
•Manchester City Art Gallery, England
•Melbourne-Australia
•Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
•Montreal (Musee de Beaux-Arts)
•National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
•Paris (Louve)
•Paris- (Museum of Modern Art)
•Paris-(Musee de Beaux-Arts de la Ville), Reims
•Tate Gallery, London
•Toledo Museum, Ohio
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