Six distinctive group portraits are now the works for which he is best known. But aren’t they strange, set in comparison with contemporary paintings?
Fantin-Latour
He seems to have painted continuously up to his death in 1904, but paintings quite unlike before. And why his huge collection of photos of nude models?
His last large group portrait features eight men who gathered to enjoy the music of Wagner. Why are they all looking in different directions, though?
Perhaps it was a mistake to include Arthur Rimbaud and his lover Paul Verlaine in this group portrait. Rimbaud had just wounded a friend with a sword in a fight after dinner.
A group portrait which failed so badly that he cut it up after it was shown at the Salon, a portrait of Manet, and another group portrait which inspired Impressionists.
Not an Impressionist by any means, he was a close friend of Whistler and Manet, who painted some of the major group portraits of the late 1800s.
In their original form as madder, derived from plants and poorly resistant to light. Refined to Alizarin Crimson, still fugitive, and a standard for fading. Finally fully ‘permanent’.
His remarkable paintings of figures in landscapes were well received at the Salons. Then came the Franco-Prussian War, and his death after just 8 years of painting.
For two centuries, Bosch’s innovative ideas and symbols were used in northern Europe. But after 1700, all changed again.
A noted critic and sculptor, a career painter, and an artist who became a local politician, with examples of their work.
The Eclectic Light Company 