French, 1836 – 1904
Fantin-Latour’s first lessons were with his father, a portrait painter. He then studied drawing with Lecoq de Boisbaudran and trained for a short period at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While copying the Old Masters in the Louvre, he met Manet, Whistler and his future wife, the painter Victoria Dubourg. As an early champion of Manet, and a member of the Café Guerbois circle, he became involved in the artistic and intellectual movements of the period, socializing with authors such and Flaubert and Zola.
Fantin-Latour was a painter of portraits, romantic figurative subjects and, most famously, still lives. In 1859, the first paintings he sent to the Salon were turned down, but in 1861 his work was exhibited, and the artist contributed almost annually until 1876. His friend, the American painter Whistler, persuaded Fantin-Latour to visit England with him in 1859, where he encountered Edwin Edwards, who was to become his most devoted patron and lifelong friend. He returned to England in 1861 and 1864, where he became much admired for his elegantly restrained and subtly composed still lives and flower paintings.
Amongst his most famous works were large group portraits such as Homage to Delacroix painted in 1864, a year after the great artist’s death, and exhibited in the 1864 Salon, which includes portraits of Whistler, Manet, Baudelaire, and Fantin-Latour himself. Dissatisfied with some of his exhibited portraits, from about 1872 he concentrated on flowers as his subject matter. Two years after his death in 1904, a large retrospective exhibition was held at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
French, 1836 – 1904
Fantin-Latour’s first lessons were with his father, a portrait painter. He then studied drawing with Lecoq de Boisbaudran and trained for a short period at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While copying the Old Masters in the Louvre, he met Manet, Whistler and his future wife, the painter Victoria Dubourg. As an early champion of Manet, and a member of the Café Guerbois circle, he became involved in the artistic and intellectual movements of the period, socializing with authors such and Flaubert and Zola.
Fantin-Latour was a painter of portraits, romantic figurative subjects and, most famously, still lives. In 1859, the first paintings he sent to the Salon were turned down, but in 1861 his work was exhibited, and the artist contributed almost annually until 1876. His friend, the American painter Whistler, persuaded Fantin-Latour to visit England with him in 1859, where he encountered Edwin Edwards, who was to become his most devoted patron and lifelong friend. He returned to England in 1861 and 1864, where he became much admired for his elegantly restrained and subtly composed still lives and flower paintings.
Amongst his most famous works were large group portraits such as Homage to Delacroix painted in 1864, a year after the great artist’s death, and exhibited in the 1864 Salon, which includes portraits of Whistler, Manet, Baudelaire, and Fantin-Latour himself. Dissatisfied with some of his exhibited portraits, from about 1872 he concentrated on flowers as his subject matter. Two years after his death in 1904, a large retrospective exhibition was held at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
French, 1869-1954
Provenance
Sotheby's sale, London, April 30, 1969 (Lot 391) Noah Goldowsky, New York Mr. Joseph P. Shure, Chicago Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago Private collection, New York (acquired from the above December 1988)
Photo-certificate of authenticity signed and dated by Madame Duthuit on May 12, 1969 in Paris.
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of color and his fluid, brilliant and original draftsmanship. As a draftsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but principally as a painter, Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the 20th century. Although he was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s, he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of color and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
Around 1904 he met Pablo Picasso, who was 12 years younger than him.[4] The two became life-long friends as well as rivals and are often compared; one key difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still lifes.
The first painting of Matisse acquired by a public collection was Still Life with Geraniums (1910), exhibited in the Pinakothek der Moderne.[14] Today, a Matisse painting can fetch as much as US $17 million. In 2002, a Matisse sculpture, Reclining Nude I (Dawn), sold for US $9.2 million, a record for a sculpture by the artist.
The Plum Blossoms a 1948 painting by Henri Matisse, was purchased on September 8, 2005, for the Museum of Modern Art by Henry Kravis and the new president of the museum, Marie-Josée Drouin. Estimated price was US $25 million. Previously, it had not been seen by the public since 1970.
Matisse’s daughter Marguerite often aided Matisse scholars with insights about his working methods and his works. She died in 1982 while compiling a catalog of her father's work.
Matisse’s son, Pierre Matisse, (1900-1989) opened an important modern art gallery in New York City during the 1930s. The Pierre Matisse Gallery which was active from 1931 until 1989 represented and exhibited many European artists and a few Americans and Canadians in New York often for the first time. He exhibited Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, André Derain, Yves Tanguy, Le Corbusier, Paul Delvaux, Wifredo Lam, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Balthus, Leonora Carrington, Zao Wou Ki, Sam Francis, sculptors Theodore Roszak, Raymond Mason and Reg Butler, and several other important artists, including the work of Henri Matisse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matisse
