GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Of the three kinds of subjects (portraiture, still-life, and the so-called "imaginative" subjects) to which Henri-Theodore Fantin-Latour devoted his career, still life is the one for which he has always been most celebrated. This superb painting is typical of the artist's most refined work in the genre, balancing an array of still-life objects—a glass vase filled with blossoming stems of hawthorn, a crystal dish abundant with cherries, and a blue and white Japanese ceramic bowl-against a delicately scumbled silvery background. Fantin-Latour's commitment to still life was inspired by the mid-19th-century avant-garde doctrine of the necessity for direct observation of nature in painting. As it had for Eugène Delacroix before him, and for his close friend Édouard Manet, a vase of flowers or a basket of fruit provided Fantin-Latour with an endless variety of compositional possibilities for his rigorous explorations of form and color.
Fantin-Latour occupies a seminal place in the complex history of avant-garde painting in Paris in the second half of the 19th century. An admirer of Gustave Courbet and a devoted friend to Manet and James McNeill Whistler, Fantin -Latour is often associated with the earliest formation of this group of young artists who would form the nucleus of the impressionists. His artistic identification with the ambitions of the new painting style is most famously documented in his homage to Manet painted in 1870, A Studio in the Batignolles, now in the Musee d'Orsay. ln this painted manifesto of modern art Fantin-Latour has portrayed Otto Scholderer, Auguste Renoir, Emile Zola, Edmond Maitre, Frederic Bazille, and Claude Monet gathered around the mentor Manet, who is at work on a portrait of critic Zacharie Astruc, seated at the center of this invented composition; however, while Fantin-Latour participated in the culture of the Parisian avant-garde at nearly every level and shared many of the same critical supporters and patrons of those artists who participated in the impressionist exhibitions, he never fully embraced any single artistic credo. Although an admirer of Courbet's realism, Fantin-Latour disdained the older painter's investment in a political art. He never shared the impressionist preoccupation with the urban landscape and painting out-of-doors, preferring the controlled environment of the studio. A lover of modern music, Fantin-Latour's mature figural work takes up subjects inspired by the compositions of Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz, thereby linking him to the realm of fin-de-siecle symbolism. Like Degas's oeuvre, Fantin-Latour's art is idiosyncratic and at times radically singular, reflecting an individual synthesis of the many currents of avant-garde production in Europe .
Like Manet and Paul Cezanne, Fantin-Latour was influenced by the revival of critical attention given to the French 18th-century painter Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin, whose still-life paintings seemed to embody the values of formal considerations divorced from literary content. Fantin-Latour's rsth-century emulation of the painterly virtues associated with Chardin is evident in the delight he takes in conducting the formal rhythms of this still-life painting. The scalloped shape of the crystal dish and ceramic bowl are repeated throughout the composition. Like Cezanne, Fantin-Latour faithfully records the perceptual conundrum posed by the Rower stems distorted by the water in the glass vase, an entanglement of what we see and what we cognitively assume to be. The intricate delicacy of Fantin-Latour's trademark technique is evident in the nuanced touch of this artist. For example, the blue-and-white bowl bears the trace of the artist's fingerprints, visible to the naked eye in raking light.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, "Henri-Théodore Fantin-Latour's Still Life with Vase of Hawthorn, Bowl of Cherries, Japanese Bowl, and Cup and Saucer," in Dallas Museum of Art, 100 Years, ed. Dorothy M. Kosinski (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2003), Pamphlet number 87.
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General Description
Of the three kinds of subjects (portraiture, still-life, and the so-called "imaginative" subjects) to which Henri-Theodore Fantin-Latour devoted his career, still life is the one for which he has always been most celebrated. This superb painting is typical of the artist's most refined work in the genre, balancing an array of still-life objects—a glass vase filled with blossoming stems of hawthorn, a crystal dish abundant with cherries, and a blue and white Japanese ceramic bowl-against a delicately scumbled silvery background. Fantin-Latour's commitment to still life was inspired by the mid-19th-century avant-garde doctrine of the necessity for direct observation of nature in painting. As it had for Eugène Delacroix before him, and for his close friend Édouard Manet, a vase of flowers or a basket of fruit provided Fantin-Latour with an endless variety of compositional possibilities for his rigorous explorations of form and color.
Fantin-Latour occupies a seminal place in the complex history of avant-garde painting in Paris in the second half of the 19th century. An admirer of Gustave Courbet and a devoted friend to Manet and James McNeill Whistler, Fantin -Latour is often associated with the earliest formation of this group of young artists who would form the nucleus of the impressionists. His artistic identification with the ambitions of the new painting style is most famously documented in his homage to Manet painted in 1870, A Studio in the Batignolles, now in the Musee d'Orsay. ln this painted manifesto of modern art Fantin-Latour has portrayed Otto Scholderer, Auguste Renoir, Emile Zola, Edmond Maitre, Frederic Bazille, and Claude Monet gathered around the mentor Manet, who is at work on a portrait of critic Zacharie Astruc, seated at the center of this invented composition; however, while Fantin-Latour participated in the culture of the Parisian avant-garde at nearly every level and shared many of the same critical supporters and patrons of those artists who participated in the impressionist exhibitions, he never fully embraced any single artistic credo. Although an admirer of Courbet's realism, Fantin-Latour disdained the older painter's investment in a political art. He never shared the impressionist preoccupation with the urban landscape and painting out-of-doors, preferring the controlled environment of the studio. A lover of modern music, Fantin-Latour's mature figural work takes up subjects inspired by the compositions of Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz, thereby linking him to the realm of fin-de-siecle symbolism. Like Degas's oeuvre, Fantin-Latour's art is idiosyncratic and at times radically singular, reflecting an individual synthesis of the many currents of avant-garde production in Europe .
Like Manet and Paul Cezanne, Fantin-Latour was influenced by the revival of critical attention given to the French 18th-century painter Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin, whose still-life paintings seemed to embody the values of formal considerations divorced from literary content. Fantin-Latour's rsth-century emulation of the painterly virtues associated with Chardin is evident in the delight he takes in conducting the formal rhythms of this still-life painting. The scalloped shape of the crystal dish and ceramic bowl are repeated throughout the composition. Like Cezanne, Fantin-Latour faithfully records the perceptual conundrum posed by the Rower stems distorted by the water in the glass vase, an entanglement of what we see and what we cognitively assume to be. The intricate delicacy of Fantin-Latour's trademark technique is evident in the nuanced touch of this artist. For example, the blue-and-white bowl bears the trace of the artist's fingerprints, visible to the naked eye in raking light.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, "Henri-Théodore Fantin-Latour's Still Life with Vase of Hawthorn, Bowl of Cherries, Japanese Bowl, and Cup and Saucer," in Dallas Museum of Art, 100 Years, ed. Dorothy M. Kosinski (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2003), Pamphlet number 87.
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