The Musician

Artist Henri Fantin-Latour (French, 1836 - 1904)

Date1877

MediumLithograph

DimensionsImage: 10 1/2 × 9 1/16 inches (26.67 × 23.02 cm)

Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Bloch

Object numberF88-20

On View

Not on view

Collections

Prints

Terms

Exhibition History

Gifts to the Print Collection in Recent Years, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, November 21, 1993-January 9, 1994, no cat., as The Musician.

The Naked and the Nude: Representations of the Body, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, October 24, 2006-April 29, 2007, no cat., as The Musician.

The Naked and the Nude: Representations of the Body, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 14, 2013-February 23, 2014, no cat., as The Musician.

Gallery Label

Fantin-Latour was a close friend of Manet (see etching to the left) but did not represent the nude with the same realism. Throughout his career, he rendered the female form with a sensuality inspired by his study of Venetian art. Here, a young woman appears as a Muse, offering inspiration to a musician at work on his composition. Her body is illuminated by the flickering light of the torch. Fantin-Latour did much to elevate the status of lithography in the 19th century, producing nearly 200 lithographs, and here he has first rapidly applied lithographic crayon before building up rich surface textures, as in the dark background, by scratching the lithographic stone. The work is inscribed to one of his pupils, Emma Callimachi, at bottom right.

Provenance

Robert L. (b. 1952) and Barbara E. (née Klugman, b. 1958) Bloch, Shawnee Mission, KS, by September 19, 1988;

Given by Robert L. and Barbara E. Bloch to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1988.

Published References

Germain Hédiard, Fantin-Latour catalogue de l'oeuvre lithographique du maître, précédé d'une étude par Germain Hédiard et d'une notice sur Germain Hédiard par Léonce Bénédite, new ed. (Paris: Librairie de l'art ancien et moderne, 1906), no. 13, p. 46, as Le Musicien.

Mme. [Victoria Dubourg] Fantin-Latour, Catalogue de l'Œuvre complet de Fantin-Latour (1849-1904) (Amsterdam: B.M. Israel, 1969), no. 861, p. 92, as Le Musicien.

George L. McKenna, Prints, 1460-1995: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 297, (repro.), as The Musician.

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