Fantin-Latour, Henri (1836-1904)
Coin de table (By the Table)
1872
Oil on canvas, 161 x 223.5 cm
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Standing:
1. Pierre Elzéar (1849-1916)
2. Émile Blémont (1839-1927)
3. Jean Aicard (1848-1921)
Seated:
4. Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
5. Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
6. Léon Valade (1841-1884)
7. Ernest d’Hervilly (1839-1911)
8. Camille Pelletan (1846-1915)
The vase with flowers is a symbol of the absent poet, Albert Mérat (1840-1909), who refused to pose with Rimbaud.
Coin de table is a group portrait as much as a testimony to the literary history of the 19th century, of the poetic movement of Parnassus in particular. At the end of a table, several men are gathered after a meal. Three are standing, from left to right: Elzéar Bonnier, Emile Blémont, Jean Aicard. Five are seated, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, Léon Valade, Ernest d’Hervilly, Camille Pelletan. All are dressed in black except one, Camille Pelletan, who is not a poet like the others, but a politician. Emile Blémont distinguished by his central position acquired the painting which he offered to the Louvre in 1910. At least two figures are missing: Charles Baudelaire, who died in 1867, and to whom the painting was initially intended to pay homage, and Albert Mérat who did not wish to be represented in the company of the sulphurous Verlaine and Rimbaud and was, it is said, replaced by a bouquet of flowers.
The format of the painting, considered too large by contemporaries, was criticized: “Who could have advised Mr. Fantin-Latour to give his Coin de table epic and monumental proportions?… there is, between the ambitious dimensions of the canvas and the subject, a contradiction which, in the long run, becomes irritating.” (Orsay)