Still Life with Flowers and Fruit
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
28 3/4 x 23 5/8 in. (73 x 60 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Bernhard Gift, by exchange, 1980
Accession Number
1980.3
Tags
Art Historical Context
Henri Fantin-Lat's *Still Life with and Fruit* (1866) invites visitors into the intimate world of 19th French domesticity. Painted in oil on canvas—a medium prized for its ability to render lush textures and glowing light—this 28 3/4 x 23 5/8-inch masterpiece captures vases brimming with vibrant flowers alongside ripe fruit. Fantin-Latour, a master of Realism, elevated everyday objects into poetic meditations on beauty and ephemerality, showcasing his precise brushwork and subtle tonal harmonies. Active during the Second Empire era, when the Paris Salon championed such meticulous still lifes,...
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 ...