By : Henri Fantin Latour

 from Grenoble, France (1836–1904)
pastel on linen 
© Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

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Study (Mlle Charlotte Dubourg) (1882)

Ignace Henri Fantin-Latour, was born in 1836 in Grenoble of mixed French and Russian parentage. He lived and worked for most of his life in Paris producing flower-paintings, still-lifes, portraits and dream-like fantasies. Though considered essentially an 'establishment' painter who exhibited throughout his career at the Salon and the Royal Academy, Fantin associated with the avant-garde, in particular the circle surrounding Manet whose realism influenced the style of his own portraits. Fantin's respect for contemporary painters, poets and musicians prompted him to honor them in large group portraits, one of the most famous being his Homage to Delacroix from 1864.Fantin worked mainly outside the fashionable art movements of the day, having little in common with the Impressionists. His sources of inspiration derived from artists of the past such as Titian, Watteau, and Chardin, whose works he studied exhaustively in the Louvre. Chardin's still-lifes found a worthy successor in Fantin's sumptuous and colorful paintings of flowers and fruit which established his popularity in England, with the help of J.A.M. Whistler.