HENRI FANTIN-LATOUR | Pommes

Mrs. Edwin Edwards, London (acquired directly from the artist)
Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 21, 1913, lot 21
Gustave Tempelaere, Paris
Félix Gérard, Paris
Rosenberg Collection, Europe
Sale: Christie's, New York, November 15, 1989, lot 365
Private Collection (acquired at the above sale and sold: Christie's, New York, November 2, 1993, lot 17)
The Lefevre Gallery, London
Private Collection, Europe (acquired from the above and sold: Sotheby's, London, February 4, 2003, lot 5)
Richard Green Fine Paintings, Ltd., London (acquired at the above sale)
Acquired from the above in 2004

Paris, Palais de l'école nationale des Beaux-Arts, Exposition de l'oeuvre de Fantin-Latour, 1906, no. 109

Madame Fantin-Latour, Catalogue de l'oeuvre complet de Fantin-Latour 1849-1904, Paris, 1911, no. 1340, p. 140

This work is in very good condition. The canvas has been relined. The colors are bright and fresh and present nicely. The impasto is well preserved. Faint vertical stretcher bar mark. Stable thin cracqulure throughout the composition. Under UV light: strokes of inpainting along all four edges to address previous frame abrasion as well as some small strokes in the background of the lower register and in the basket. Some orange and red pigments also fluoresce. Otherwise, fine.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The first owner of this work and the previous lot was Ruth Edwards, wife of English painter Edwin Edwards and a friend of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. It was Whistler himself who persuaded Fantin-Latour to come to London for the first time in 1859. Mr. & Mrs. Edwards became Fantin-Latour's greatest patrons, for whom he painted a large number of works. Fantin-Latour's technique, as evidenced by the present work, owes much to the technique in development by many of his close friends, including Édouard Manet. Continually influenced by the Old Masters he studied at the Louvre, he was especially drawn to the flower and vanitas painters of the seventeenth-century Netherlands. In the still-life paintings with fruit, Fantin-Latour's debt to Chardin becomes very clear (see fig. 1). The light and airy brushwork seen in the flower paintings yields to a stronger concern for balance of mass and volume. Nevertheless, he maintains his usual sense of delicacy, effectively contrasting the weighty rotund forms of the fruit with the finely woven strand of the basket. 

This painting will be included in the catalogue raisonné of Fantin-Latour’s paintings and pastels by Galerie Brame & Lorenceau now in preparation.