Portrait of Édouard Manet
1867/1880
Medium
Black crayon, with touches of charcoal, on cream wove paper
Dimensions
39.9 × 31.1 cm (15 3/4 × 12 1/4 in.)
Classification
chalk
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
28170
Art Historical Context
This delicate portrait captures Édouard Manet, one of the most influential figures in nineteenth-century French painting, through the sensitive hand of his contemporary Henri Fantin-Latour. Rendered in black crayon with subtle touches of charcoal on cream wove paper, the drawing belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago’s Prints and Drawings collection. Measuring just under sixteen by twelve inches, the work’s modest scale invites close viewing and suggests an intimate, personal exchange between artist and subject. Fantin-Latour’s choice of chalk media allows for soft gradations and precise lin...
About the Artist
Henri Fantin-Latour · 1836–1904
Ignace Henri Jean Théodore Fantin-Latour was born on January 14, 1836, in Grenoble, France, to portrait painter Théodore Fantin-Latour, who gave him his earliest drawing lessons. The family relocated to Paris in 1841, where in 1850, at age 14, he enrolled in the École de Dessin, studying under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, whose innovative memory-based method of drawing from observation profoundly ...