Dates | 1836 - 1904 |
Roles | Artist |
Nationality | French |
Born | Grenoble, France |
Died | Buré, France |
Henri Fantin-Latour came to prominence in the era of
At the age of ten, Fantin-Latour began training as an artist with his father, a painter. He later studied with Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, an innovative and important teacher known for his system of teaching visual memory. Fantin-Latour developed an enthusiasm for Italian painters, especially Titian and Paolo Veronese, and regularly copied their work at the
By the early 1860s, Fantin-Latour was producing the three genres of painting that would sustain his career: portraiture, still-life painting, and imaginative or mythological scenes. Commissioned portraits and still-life paintings of flowers and fruit were essential to the artist's livelihood and he established an important clientele in England. But Fantin-Latour received the greatest critical attention for a series of ambitious group portraits featuring many of the most renowned artists, writers, and musicians of the time. His imaginative works were often inspired by his great love of music and he created several paintings based on the operas of Richard Wagner. Fantin-Latour increasingly explored