Flowers

Flowers at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam dates to around 1876 and is a characteristic example of the flower still lifes that made Fantin-Latour one of the most sought-after painters in England as well as France during the second half of the nineteenth century. His flower paintings were particularly popular with English collectors, who admired their combination of Old Master tonal authority and fresh botanical observation. The English Pre-Raphaelite circle championed his work, and his London dealer Edwards sold paintings regularly to enthusiastic British buyers.

Fantin-Latour arranges the flowers in the half-shadow manner inherited from seventeenth-century Dutch still life — the blooms emerging from a dark ground with controlled tonal gradation — while his touch is distinctly modern in its directness and freshness. Each flower type is observed with botanical precision, the differences in petal structure and surface texture carefully distinguished.