Henri Fantin-Latour (French, 1836–1904)
Scene from Oberon, 1869
Oil on canvas, 12 3/4 x 9 1/2 in.
Signed lower center: Fantin; dated upper left: 7 Janvier 69
2002.39
[image_frame style=”framed” link_to=”false” prettyphoto=”false” align=”left”]https://daheshmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Fantin-Latour-Scene-from-Oberon-300×423.jpg[/image_frame]Best remembered today for his portraits and still lifes (particularly his flower paintings), Fantin-Latour also composed many fantasy scenes inspired by mythological, allegorical, and musical subjects. He studied with his father, Jean-Théodore Fantin-Latour, a portrait painter, before training at the École Imperiale du Dessin (also known as the Petite École, or “Little School”) under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Fantin-Latour met the Realist painter Gustave Courbet in 1859, and studied with the controversial artist for several months in 1861. Although he exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon from 1861, Fantin-Latour did not receive official recognition until 1870 (when he received a third-class medal for A Studio in the Batignolles; 1870, Musée d’Orsay). He was rejected from the Salon of 1859 and exhibited in the Salon des Refusés in 1863, events that led to befriending many avant-garde artists, including Edouard Manet, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and the future Impressionists. Following 1870, Fantin-Latour saw much more favorable critical attention, winning a second-class medal in 1875. By 1879, the art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans described Fantin-Latour as “one of the best artists that we possess in France,” and, in 1897, he received the Legion of Honor.
Reminiscent of his better-known compositions inspired by Richard Wagner’s operas, this sketch presents a scene from Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Oberon, or The Elf King’s Oath, which premiered in London in 1826. Fantin-Latour chose the moment when the knight Huon of Bordeaux falls in love with Reiza, the daughter of the Caliph of Baghdad, who first appears to him in a dream. As in other works, he chose to evoke his dreamlike visions—thus paving the way for the Symbolist movement. This painting once belonged to Roger Marx, an important French critic and collector. He organized the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889, and was a great champion of avant-garde artists like Paul Cézanne.