Henri Fantin-Latourartist • painterGrenoble (Frankrijk) 1836-1904 Buré (Frankrijk)

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) was a close friend of the first generation of impressionists from Paris. Nevertheless, artistically speaking, he was not one of them. While these avant-garde painters fiercely defended their innovative ideas, Fantin-Latour created his own, more hushed style and stood among them with his own traditional, realistic style. Unlike the Impressionists, he was hardly interested in the landscape or the city. He painted beautiful (group) portraits of contemporary writers such as Baudelaire and Zola and friend Eduard Monet, despite rejecting their impressionist ideas. Fantin Latour also maintained close contacts with the Parisian music world, especially with people who shared his love for Richard Wagner's operas.
James Whistler, the American painter who would live most of his life in the United Kingdom, introduced him to English society in 1859, which allowed the French artist to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy in London from 1862. Fantin Latour became famous for his refined flower still lifes, which were extremely popular in England and far beyond. Fantin Latour himself said that they did not appeal to his imagination much, but that they did generate an income for him. Sometimes they go in the direction of impressionism with their loose brushwork, but the use of color is darker and more cloudy, with the shape of the flowers, and not the atmosphere or light, being the main focus. He applied a sometimes magical use of color in his later, vaguely symbolistic fantasy depictions that reveal his passion for music. From this would arise many allegorical representations of female nudes: baigneuses, nymphs and odalisks.
In the Netherlands, Fantin-Latour's paintings were loved by a small circle of collectors of French painting, including the Twente textile manufacturer Jan Bernard Scholten (1870-1947), a man with a great love for nature and silence. Helene Kröller-Müller also bought work from him for her art collection, which later found a home in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo.