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TITLE:
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A la mémoire de Robert Schumann
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WORK DATE:
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1873
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CATEGORY:
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Paintings
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MATERIALS:
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Oil on canvas
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SIZE:
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12.75 x 8 inches (32 x 20 cm.)
Framed: 19 x 14 inches (48.2 x 35.5 cm.)
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PRICE*:
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Contact Gallery for Price
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DESCRIPTION:
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This painting will be included in the catalogue raisonné of Fantin-Latour’s paintings and pastels by Galerie Brame & Lorenceau now in preparation.
Born in Grenoble in 1836, Henri Fantin-Latour was the son of the portrait painter, Théodore Fantin-Latour. The family moved to Paris in 1841, and at the age of 10, Fantin-Latour began to study painting with his father. In 1850, he entered the studio of Lecoq de Boisbaudran, an innovative and highly revered teacher known for his system of training visual memory. In 1854, he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and also briefly studied under Gustave Courbet in 1861. During his studies, Fantin-Latour developed an appreciation for the Italian masters, in particular Titian and Veronese. He spent much of his time copying works in the Louvre, which he sold mostly to American and English clients. While painting in the Louvre in 1857, he met Edouard Manet, with whom he forged a lasting friendship, and in 1858, he also met Whistler and his future wife, Victoria Dubourg.
In 1861, Fantin-Latour exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon, having been refused entry in 1859, along with his friends Manet and Whistler. He continued to contribute works to the Salon almost annually up until 1876, but also took part in the first Salon des Refusés in 1863.
Like his father, Henri Fantin-Latour became a respected portrait painter, and in the 1860s produced impressive and important works documenting his friendships with some of the most avant-garde artists, poets, and musicians of the period. Painted in 1894, Homage to Delacroix (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) depicts Fantin-Latour with Baudelaire, Manet, Whistler and others, grouped around a portrait of Delacroix. A Studio at Batignolles, 1870 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), depicts a group of artists, including Fantin-Latour, Monet and Renoir, watching Monet paint in his studio. Despite his association with the most forward thinking artists of the age, Fantin-Latour remained, at heart, a traditionalist. He rarely painted outside, preferring to remain in his studio where he produced his portraits, still lifes, and romantic, imaginative scenes from the operas of Wagner, Schumann and Berlioz.
Fantin-Latour loved music almost as much as painting. Far from being an inhibiting and competitive factor, this passion constantly enriched his sources of pictorial inspiration and he established a close relationship between the two art forms in a manner imbued with Romantic sentiments but one that heralded his Symbolist interests. These musical “adaptations” in painting were the only subjects that encouraged him temporarily to abandon realistic themes and devote himself to the creation of imaginary, poetic, and totally original worlds. Schumann, Brahms, Berlioz, and above all Richard Wagner were his sources of inspiration. From 1880, Fantin-Latour’s work was initially indebted to Romanticism then subsequently came close to Realism and to the “painters of modern life” before moving on to reveal an interest in the work of the early Symbolists. When he returned to “themes of the imagination” at the end of his career the artist revived the idea of contributing to the “painting of the future”, championing the pre-eminent role of the dream in art through works inspired by religious, mythological and allegorical themes.
In addition, the works of this late period are characterized by a vitality and evident sense of joy, expressed in the use of refined, pleasing colors and intense luminosity. In particular, they express a vibrant, sensual eroticism.
Painted in 1873, ours is one of two paintings of this subject executed in conjunction with Fantin-Latour’s lithograph of the same year titled A la Mémoire de Robert Schumann (Hédiard, no. 5). A young girl brings a bouquet of flowers to the tomb of the composer that is partially hidden by a cypress tree. The composition of the other painting (no. 668 in Mme. Fantin-Latour’s catalogue raisonné) is inversed from the present work, which matches the direction of the lithograph. The three works have very similar dimensions.
In an article on Fantin-Latour’s lithographs from 1920, Frank Gibson writes, “In August 1873, when the great Bonn music festival was celebrated in honor of Schumann, Fantin, though not present at the ceremony, thought he, too, would like to pay homage to the great genius. This he did by producing the great lithograph, A la Mémoire de Robert Schumann. It is a great advance in his essays in lithography, and the artist represents the Muse as a fair-haired young girl about to place a bouquet of flowers on Schumann’s tomb. It is a simple but dignified conception, and rich if somber in tone” (Frank Gibson, “The Lithographs of Henri Fantin-Latour,” International Studio, London, vol. LXXVIII, no. 322, January, 1920, p. 136).
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PROVENANCE:
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Sale, Christie’s, London December 7, 1973, lot 295
Ansbach (acquired at the above sale)
Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, October 30, 1980, lot 220, illustrated
Private Collection, Connecticut, (acquired at the above sale)
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LITERATURE:
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Hédiard, Cf. Germain, Fantin-Latour: Catalogue de l’Oeuvre Lithographique du Maître, no. 5, for illustration of the lithograph, Paris: 1906
Fantin-Latour, Madame, Catalogue de l’Oeuvre Complet de Fantin-Latour, p. 75, no. 669, Paris: 1911,
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