Still Life with Flowers

Henri Fantin-Latour · 1881

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

48.2 × 59.7 cm (19 × 23 1/2 in.); Framed: 75.6 × 86.4 × 9.6 cm (29 3/4 × 34 × 3 3/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Realism

Still Life with Flowers is one of the finest examples of Henri Fantin-Latour's lifelong devotion to the genre that made him famous — a serene arrangement of blooms rendered with a softness and weight that feels almost impossibly close to life. Fantin-Latour occupied a singular position in nineteenth-century French painting: deeply connected to the avant-garde circles around Manet and the Impressionists, yet committed to a quieter, more classical approach to light and surface. His flowers were built up in thin, carefully modulated layers, giving petals a translucent depth that no photograph has ever quite captured. He painted with patience rather than bravura, and it shows. His flower pieces became so sought-after in Britain that he spent months each year filling English commissions, and his reputation there arguably eclipsed his standing in France during his own lifetime. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made to the same scale as the original, using traditional oil pigments on canvas — the only medium that can honestly honour the texture and tonal range Fantin-Latour spent decades perfecting.