French, 1836-1934.

Henri Fantin-Latour came to prominence in the era of Impressionism and had personal and professional connections to the group. But he preferred to exhibit at the Salon rather than with the Impressionists and unlike Claude Monet or Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Fantin-Latour rarely painted outdoors.

In addition to his realistic paintings, Fantin-Latour created imaginative lithographs inspired by the music of some of the great classical composers. In 1876, Fantin-Latour attended a performance of the Ring cycle at Bayreuth, which he found particularly moving. He would later publish lithographs inspired by Richard Wagner in La revue wagnérienne, which helped solidify his reputation among Paris’ avant-garde as an anti-naturalist painter.  Sloan, Rachel (2009). “The Condition of printmaking: Wagnerism and printmaking in France and Britain”. Art History. 32 (3): 545–577. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8365.2009.00681.x

Fantin-Latour’s works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.