Henri Fantin-Latour

Ionidès Collection, London
John Russell Buckler, London (and sold: Christie's, London, March 10, 1906, lot 52)
M. Knoedler & Co., Ltd., New York
James Hanson
Alex Reid & Lefevre, Ltd., London
Acquired from the above in 1965

London, Lefevre Gallery, XIX and XX Century French Paintings and Drawings, 1964, no. 13, illustrated in the catalogue

Madame Fantin-Latour, Catalogue de l'oeuvre complet de Fantin-Latour 1849-1904, Paris, 1911, no. 241, p. 34
Frank Gibson, The Art of Henri Fantin-Latour: His Life and Work, London, 1924, p. 48

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Painted in 1864, the first year Fantin-Latour exhibited floral still-life paintings at the Royal Academy, Fleurs represents one of the artist’s earliest public forays into the genre. Though he would not begin to achieve financial or critical success as a painter of still-lifes until almost a decade later, examples like this one mark a pivotal moment in the Fantin-Latour’s career. During his second trip to England in 1861, Fantin-Latour found himself preoccupied with painting quick sketches of still-lifes and flowers, which delighted his host Seymour Haden (fellow artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s brother-in-law) and patron-to-be Edwin Edwards. The enthusiasm with which these still-lifes were received in England motivated Fantin-Latour to turn away from his training in portraiture, driven in no small part by the need to earn a living.

Fantin-Latour brought to his flower paintings the attention to detail he had honed in his portraiture practice. Unlike portraiture, however, still-life offered greater opportunity for observation, allowing Fantin-Latour to experiment with color, texture, and form. His flower paintings are remarkable in their crispness and realism; each flower is easily recognizable and has its own individual identity. According to Edward Lucie-Smith: “He looked at flowers, as he did at faces, with no preconceptions. His belief, academic in origin, that technique in painting was separable from the subject to which the artist applied it, enabled him to see the blooms he painted not as botanical specimens, but as things which, though not necessarily significant in themselves, would generate significant art upon the canvas. At the same time, the naturalist bias of the milieu in which he had been brought up encouraged him to try and give a completely objective description of all the nuances of color and form which he saw in the bouquet he had arranged" (Edward Lucie-Smith, Henri Fantin-Latour, New York, 1977, pp. 22-23).