Roses and Flowers in a Glass

Description

March 28 2009
Henri Fantin-Latour painted in a wide variety of genres, but he is perhaps best known for the beautiful still lifes that were his particular specialty. Though in the 1860s he socialized with the most progressive artists of his day, such as the painters Manet and Renoir, he refused to exhibit with the Impressionists in their 1874 show. His work, which was exhibited in the Paris Salons from 1861 to 1899, was both popular and generally well received by critics, and his still lifes were much admired abroad. In 1859 James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) introduced Fantin-Latour’s work to England, where he had many patrons, and he continued to show at the Royal Academy in London until 1900.
Fantin-Latour was an aficionado of music, especially that of Berlioz and Wagner, and he made many lithographs based on themes inspired by contemporary composers. The balance and grandeur of this intimate depiction of flowers against a neutral background belies the modesty of its subject; the blooms are carefully observed and enveloped in an atmosphere that evokes “la vie silencieuse”—the quiet dignity and life of inanimate objects—and it surely embodies the imagination and lyricism he found so satisfying in music.