An Atelier in the Batignolles

Henri Fantin-Latour • Painting, 1870, 204×273.5 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Portrait
Style of art: Realism
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1870
Size: 204×273.5 cm
Artwork in selections: 11 selections

Description of the artwork «An Atelier in the Batignolles»

In the late 1860s between the official with the conservative Salon jury and painters and innovators of overdue serious conflict. He was of such magnitude that had to intervene to the Emperor Napoleon III and to provide "Les Miserables" artists have a special place to showcase the paintings that were not accepted in the Cabin.

Group portrait "Studio in the Batignolles" ("Studio at the Batignolles") can be considered a Manifesto and a statement of creative friendship. As wrote the author of the paintings-Henri Fantin-Latour: "No family ties, no family ties bring together people from now on, and the sense of belonging to a common cause".

The artist captures a group of people with serious faces, they are dressed in dark suits. Fantin-Latour wanted to give them respectability because they were criticized and condemned. The objective of the portrait was not in the disclosure of the characters,and in the transmission proximity to each other and community members.

On the left in the picture two subjects, which demonstrate the symbols of the "new school of painting": the statue of Minerva as a tribute to ancient traditions and Japanese ceramic pitcher a sign of admiration for Japanese art (it had a strong influence on the Impressionists major ones of which are depicted in this portrait).

From left to right in the painting "Atelier in Paris" shows:

-Otto Solderer, a German artist who came to France to meet followers Gustave Courbet.

-Edouard Manet sitting at the easel. The painting depicts his workshop. Young artists for four years will call Impressionists that time was called the "mane gang" or batignolle. The Batignolles district of Paris, where the filming workshops, met and argued and drank the future Impressionists. French Bohemia to this day settles in these places.

- Auguste Renoir in the hat - he's only 29 years old.

- Zachariah, Astruc French journalist and artist (seated next to Manet). Perhaps it is his portrait of Manet writes during this included in the history, of the session.

- Emile Zola (behind blue chair) - as a journalist he defended the work of the Impressionists in his articles, but as the writer has depicted some of them in his novel "Creativity": for example, Claude Lantier, Zola off with Cezanne.

- Edmond Maitre (the picture to the right of Zola) is a musician, collector and philanthropist, the friend of artists-rebels.

- Frederic Bazille in a memorable plaid pants - artist, he is 28 years old, a few months after writing this picture he dies in the Franco-Prussian war. In this company he is the tallest, most prominent in art Basil could take the same place like on this picture: so I thought about it contemporaries, say the current researchers of impressionism. And Manet, and Basil had their workshops in the heart of Paris. Basile his captured in the same 1870 year.

- Claude Monet - barely squeezed into the space of the picture and modestly peeping over the shoulder of a Basile man whose name would soon become synonymous with impressionism.

Fantin-Latour is anticipated that in the future the work of the Impressionists can be understood and accepted: "When the current nonsense coming future and attacks on Manet will stop, in my picture will only see the scene in the interior of the Studio where the artist paints a portrait of a friend, surrounded by other friends".

Author: Alexander Berezhnaya
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