Fantin-Latour, Henri (1836-1904)
Un atelier aux Batignolles (A Studio at Les Batignolles)
1870
Oil on canvas, 204 x 273.5 cm
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Portraits:
1. Édouard Manet (1832-1883)
2. Otto Scholderer (1834-1902)
3. Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
4. Émile Zola (1840-1902)
5. Edmond Maître (1840-1898)
6. Frédéric Bazille (1841-1870)
7. Claude Monet (1840-1926)
8. Zacharie Astruc (1833-1907)
Batignolles was the district where Manet and a number of future Impressionists lived. Fantin-Latour, a discreet witness of this period, gathered around Manet, the consecrated head of the school, young artists with innovative ideas. From left to right, we can recognize Otto Scholderer, a German painter who came to France to meet Courbet‘s disciples; Manet, with a sharp face, sitting in front of his easel; Auguste Renoir, wearing a hat; Zacharie Astruc, sculptor and journalist; Émile Zola, spokesman for the renewal of painting; Edmond Maître, a civil servant at the Hôtel de Ville; Frédéric Bazille, who would be cut down a few months later, at the age of twenty-eight, during the war of 1870; and finally, Claude Monet.
The attitudes are sober, the costumes severe, the faces almost serious. Fantin-Latour wants these young artists, who were much maligned at the time, to be perceived as serious and respectable personalities. The general atmosphere of the studio is also marked by sobriety: few details, few decorative elements. Only two accessories remind the spectator of certain aesthetic choices of the new school: the statuette of Minerva testifies to the respect due to ancient tradition, the Japanese-style stoneware pot evokes the admiration of this entire generation of artists for Japanese art.
In this group portrait exhibited at the Salon of 1870, each person seems to be posing for posterity. This work affirms the links that Fantin-Latour maintained with the avant-garde of the time and Manet in particular. It echoes Zola‘s opinion on Manet: “Around the painter vilified by the public, a common front of painters and writers has been created claiming him as a master”. Edmond de Goncourt, for his part, mocks in his journal the man he calls “the distributor of glory to brewery geniuses”. (Orsay)
See also:
• Batignolles (Paris)