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Lot Essay
Galerie Brame & Lorenceau will include this painting in their forthcoming Fantin-Latour catalogue raisonné now in preparation.
When Fantin-Latour accepted this commission, he noted to Edwin Edwards, his English agent, his decision to tighten his execution "to do everything that I undertake very seriously, and to leave only very finished work" to ensure that he would learn more of the "science" of painting "while making my living" (letter from Fantin to Edwards, 2 March 1865). The artist was afraid of becoming a "fabricator" of still-lifes and "because of this fear I promised myself always to do them with the greatest care" (Fantin to Edwards, 2 March 1865).
Douglas Druick writes of this work and its pendant picture (lot 4):
The majority of Fantin's English patrons of this period each purchased or commissioned still-lifes to hang as pendants. Fantin accomodated this taste by painting pictures in pairs on the same size canvas, although he never conceived of his pictures as pendants... Shortly after Fantin agreed to work on the commission. Edwards wrote to congratulate him on what he believed to be Fantin's approach to satisfying his patrons: 'to do nearly the same things with just a little variation to show that one's tastes are not limited. You are sure to please by doing the same things' (letter from Fantin to Edwards 25 February, 1865). What Edwards interpreted as a marketing strategy was in fact the outcome of Fantin's continuing interest in using still-life as a vehicle to formal experimentation and pursuing 'Art for Art's sake' (D. Druick, exh. cat., op. cit., 1982-1983, p. 124).
In a continuing discussion of Phillip's commission, Druick writes of the present painting:
Here Fantin has created the illusion of a deeper space by showing both front and back edges of the tabletop; by contrasting it sharply with the background, in both value and hue; and by convincingly setting the glass bowl behind the cup and saucer, to create a diagonal recession into the picture space reinforced by the positioning of the spoon. There is further variation in the pictorial balance. Fantin centres the bowl on the vertical axis and alleviates the potentially static effect by placing the flowers to either side of the axis, and by creating numerous diagonal movements into and across the pictorial space. The background serves both as a foil to the bouquet and as a screen upon which the shadows of the flowers and bowl create a pattern of echoing shapes.
Colouristically, the work is the more subtle: one senses the artist's delight in creating a full range of purples through varying admixtures of blue, lake and white -- from the pale mauve of the background, cup, and saucer through the light purples of the primulas to the deeper ones of the cineraria. Reflections are deftly treated. The highlight on the wall, created by the light passing through the glass bowl, contains yellow and mauve echoes of colours from the bouquet; the touches of green in the silver spoon and the white cup subtly mirror the green stem in the bowl (ibid., p. 124).
When Fantin-Latour accepted this commission, he noted to Edwin Edwards, his English agent, his decision to tighten his execution "to do everything that I undertake very seriously, and to leave only very finished work" to ensure that he would learn more of the "science" of painting "while making my living" (letter from Fantin to Edwards, 2 March 1865). The artist was afraid of becoming a "fabricator" of still-lifes and "because of this fear I promised myself always to do them with the greatest care" (Fantin to Edwards, 2 March 1865).
Douglas Druick writes of this work and its pendant picture (lot 4):
The majority of Fantin's English patrons of this period each purchased or commissioned still-lifes to hang as pendants. Fantin accomodated this taste by painting pictures in pairs on the same size canvas, although he never conceived of his pictures as pendants... Shortly after Fantin agreed to work on the commission. Edwards wrote to congratulate him on what he believed to be Fantin's approach to satisfying his patrons: 'to do nearly the same things with just a little variation to show that one's tastes are not limited. You are sure to please by doing the same things' (letter from Fantin to Edwards 25 February, 1865). What Edwards interpreted as a marketing strategy was in fact the outcome of Fantin's continuing interest in using still-life as a vehicle to formal experimentation and pursuing 'Art for Art's sake' (D. Druick, exh. cat., op. cit., 1982-1983, p. 124).
In a continuing discussion of Phillip's commission, Druick writes of the present painting:
Here Fantin has created the illusion of a deeper space by showing both front and back edges of the tabletop; by contrasting it sharply with the background, in both value and hue; and by convincingly setting the glass bowl behind the cup and saucer, to create a diagonal recession into the picture space reinforced by the positioning of the spoon. There is further variation in the pictorial balance. Fantin centres the bowl on the vertical axis and alleviates the potentially static effect by placing the flowers to either side of the axis, and by creating numerous diagonal movements into and across the pictorial space. The background serves both as a foil to the bouquet and as a screen upon which the shadows of the flowers and bowl create a pattern of echoing shapes.
Colouristically, the work is the more subtle: one senses the artist's delight in creating a full range of purples through varying admixtures of blue, lake and white -- from the pale mauve of the background, cup, and saucer through the light purples of the primulas to the deeper ones of the cineraria. Reflections are deftly treated. The highlight on the wall, created by the light passing through the glass bowl, contains yellow and mauve echoes of colours from the bouquet; the touches of green in the silver spoon and the white cup subtly mirror the green stem in the bowl (ibid., p. 124).