Henri Fantin-Latour

Mrs Edwards, London
Sir Harry J. Veitch, England
Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter (bequest from the above in 1924. Sale: Christie's, London, 22nd October 1954, lot 64)
Leggatt Brothers (purchased at the above sale)
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Artemis Fine Arts, London
Edgar Batista, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1985

Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum (1924-54)
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 19th Century European Painting, 1981-82, no. 27, illustrated in colour on the cover of the catalogue

Madame Fantin-Latour, Catalogue de l'oeuvre complet de Henri-Fantin-Latour, Paris, 1911, no. 1596, catalogued p. 169
Michelle Verrier, Fantin-Latour, New York, 1978, illustrated p. 40

The present work is an outstanding example of Fantin-Latour's favourite subject, the still-life of flowers. Roses trémières, or hollyhocks, were very popular in France and England in the late nineteenth century. Fantin executed several paintings of this subject, of which this is perhaps the finest example, depicting the flowers without their vase, thus focusing the attention entirely on the freshness and liveliness of the hollyhocks.

The precision with which he depicted his subject, paying attention to the texture and various colours of individual flowers, displays Fantin-Latour's virtuosity in capturing their ephemeral beauty. This technique, which allows the artist to render differences in surface quality of various elements within the traditional genre of still-life, owes much to the Old Masters whose paintings he studied at the Louvre, particularly those by the eighteenth-century master Chardin. Fantin-Latour was also influenced by the style of his friends from the Impressionist circle, and Douglas Druick compared his still-lifes with those executed by Edouard Manet:

 

'Fantin also has shown more interest than Manet in breaking away from the conventions of still-life composition. Where Manet, following tradition, has aligned the various objects on a buffet, parallel to the picture plane, Fantin has looked for an arrangement that, while controlled, suggests the randomness of nature [...] This successful compromise between order and disorder allowed Fantin the best of both worlds' (D. Druick in Fantin-Latour (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1983, p. 124). This truthfulness to nature is beautifully exemplified in the present work in the seemingly spontaneous arrangement of flowers. The versatility and endless possibilities offered by these flowers provided the artist with a constant source of inspiration, and the present composition demonstrates the mastery and refinement that he reached in his mature work.