Potted Pansies
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
11 × 13 1/2 in. (27.9 × 34.3 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Susan S. Dillon, 2013
Accession Number
2013.636
Tags
Art Historical Context
Henri Fantin-Latour’s *Potted Pansies* (1883) captures the quiet beauty of a simple floral arrangement in a modest still-life format. A leading French painter of the nineteenth century, Fantin-Latour was celebrated for his flower paintings, which combined precise observation with a restrained, almost photographic realism. Though he moved in circles that included Impressionists and Symbolists, he remained devoted to the traditional genres of still life and portraiture, producing works prized for their clarity and tonal subtlety. Painted in oil on canvas, the small-scale composition (just 11 by...
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 ...