Still Life: Corner of a Table

Still Life: Corner of a Table, at the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of Fantin-Latour's larger compositional still lifes, presenting a table corner with flowers, fruit, glasses, and other objects in the tradition of seventeenth-century Flemish abundance still life as filtered through French naturalism. Dated to around 1873, the work demonstrates his ambition to move beyond simple flower arrangements toward the more complex compositional challenge of the multi-element table arrangement. The Art Institute acquired this work as part of its substantial nineteenth-century French holdings, where it has long been one of the collection's most admired objects.

Fantin-Latour orchestrates the various objects across the table surface with careful attention to tonal balance — dark bottles and glasses providing structural contrast to the lighter flowers and fruit above. His handling moves between the precise botanical observation of individual blooms and the broader tonal painting of the glass, ceramic, and fruit objects, the variety of surface treatment reflecting the compositional ambition of the work.