Henri Fantin-Latour

In 1841, the Fantin-Latour family moved to Paris, where Henri took drawing lessons from his father, a successful portrait painter. At the age of fourteen, he attended evening classes at the Ecole de Dessin. A fellow pupil, Solon, encouraged him to go to the classes of Lecoq-de-Boisbaudran, who also counted Rodin, Tissot, Legros, and L’hermitte among his pupils. However, he was not a success at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which he left only three months after having been admitted in 1854. To complete his artistic education, Fantin-Latour devoted himself to copying the Old Masters at the Louvre, which he continued to do right up until about 1870, long after he had begun to establish himself professionally. It was whilst working at the Louvre that he made most of the important personal encounters of his life, meeting Manet in 1857, Berthe Morisot and Whistler in the following year and his future wife, Victoria Dubourg in 1866.

In 1859, he submitted his first three paintings to the Salon, all of which were rejected. His Salon breakthrough arrived in 1861 when three of his portraits were accepted, including one of a young English painter, W. M. Ridley. Ridley introduced Fantin-Latour to his English friends, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Edwards. Fantin-Latour himself visited Great Britain on three occasions, firstly in 1859 with his friend Whistler, and later in 1861 and 1864.

Through his friendship with Manet, Fantin-Latour became involved in the artistic and literary circles of the day. However, a shy person with fear of crowds, he gradually retreated from society, only really at ease in the company of his close friends and his family. Likewise, as his official acceptance grew, he distanced himself from the Impressionist circle, which he increasingly felt to be greatly at variance with his own way of working. For example, he never painted en plein air. Works by Fantin-Latour were accepted at the Salon in almost every year between 1863 and 1876, but, dissatisfied with some of his exhibited portraits, he concentrated from about 1872 on flowers for his subject matter. In 1899, he submitted paintings to the Salon for the last time. Two years after his death in 1904, a large retrospective exhibition was held at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.