Ein Atelier in den Batignolles

Fantin-Latour painted this group in 1870, and it catches a circle at the exact moment before it scattered. At the easel sits Édouard Manet, the older painter the others treated as their leader, shown at work on a portrait. Gathered around him are the men who met to argue about art at a café in the Batignolles district of Paris, among them Auguste Renoir looking over his shoulder, the writer Émile Zola, and at the far right a tall young painter, Frédéric Bazille. Fantin-Latour meant it as a public act of respect, putting Manet, still mocked by the official Salon, at the center of a serious brotherhood. Within months the Franco-Prussian War broke out. Bazille enlisted and was killed in action that November, 28 years old, before the group he stands in had even acquired the name Impressionists. The canvas is in the Musée d'Orsay.