Many painters have a special preference for painting objects, such as Rembrandt may have painted the most moving self-portrait in the history of art; John Constable's changing sky and clouds are unmatched; then henri Fantin-Latour, introduced today, is a group portrait of flowers and fellow painters.
Henri Fantin-Latour, Self-Portrait
A French painter with a Dutch spirit
Born on 14 January 1836 in Grenoble, France, Fontaine-Latour was a painter whose first painting skills were inherited from his father and trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
During his studies, Fontaine-Latour spent a long time copying the works of the masters in the Louvre. As a painter in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century, Fontaine-Latour was unimpressed by the Impressionist paintings that were brewing at the time. He admires Dutch Golden Age painting the most, so in terms of subject matter, brushwork, color, and picture atmosphere, we can see the relationship between Fontaine-Latour and Dutch painting.
His early work, Woman Reading, depicted his own sister. The painter uses dull colors to present still, peaceful, restrained, serious pictures, and the figures are concentrating on reading this daily activity– these are the characteristics of Dutch painting. The Woman Who Reads can be said to have revealed the style of fontaine-Latour's later portraiture.
Fontaine–Latour, Woman Reading
Flowers and Still Lifes: Record the most beautiful moments of nature at speed
In general, Fontaine-Latour himself has always retained the traditional realist style, trying to faithfully capture things as they really are. The still life painting with the flower as the protagonist is one of fontaine-Latour's masterpieces, and his flower paintings were very popular at the time, and he completed more than five hundred commissions in his lifetime, more than one hundred of which were painted with roses.
A Basket of Roses (Sotheby's)
In order to paint the most vital side of natural flowers, Fontaine-Latour insisted on painting according to real flowers. But the flowers quickly withered, so Fontaine-Latour used a special quick-drying canvas that allowed him to quickly apply multiple layers and record them when the flowers were still at their most beautiful.
The flowers in many of the paintings seem to be random, but they are carefully arranged by Fontaine-Latour in composition, emphasizing the structure and color of various flowers at different angles and placements. The floral collection shows his keen attention to detail and completes the paintings with meticulous expressiveness.
People and Portraits: Marginalized People in Group Portraits of Artists
Another type of fontaine-Latour's work beyond flower painting is the artist's group composition.
Although Fontaine-Latour insisted on realism, he was friends with the former Impressionist painters James McNeill Whistler and Édouard Manet, and the differences in style did not affect their friendship.
After the death of Delacroix, who painted Liberty Leading the People, Fontaine-La Tour painted Homage to Delacroix in tribute to this high-ranking figure in the French painting world, and Delacroix was painted as a portrait and appeared in the painting as a frame. It is worth mentioning that in the lower right corner of the painting sits the modernist poet Charles Pierre Baudelaire.
Fontaine-Latour homage to Delacroix
A Studio at Les Batignolles features Manet with a paintbrush in his hand, facing an easel and canvas, including Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, as well as the great novelist Émile Zola.
Fontaine-Latour's A Studio at Les Batignolles
In the era of Fontaine-Latour, avant-garde artists led by Impressionism were about to open the door to modern art, and art history had entered a new and exciting period. Among other avant-garde artists, fontaine-Latour, who insisted on realism, was marginal in this circle. In addition to reflecting the concerns of Fontaine-Latour and other painters, his group portrait paintings became important historical documents in the history of art in an era when photography was still not very developed and popular.
Although Fontaine-Latour was in a time of rebellion and upheaval, he himself still had a place in art history with traditional painting methods.
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