Um das Klavier

By 1885 France had spent 14 years nursing the wound of its defeat by Prussia, and admiring anything German, Wagner above all, could look close to disloyal. Fantin-Latour painted this room of friends anyway: the composer Emmanuel Chabrier at the keyboard, gathered with critics and musicians who met privately to play through Wagner's scores. They called their little circle Le Petit Bayreuth, after the German town where Wagner staged his operas. When it hung at the Salon that year, visitors nicknamed it The Wagnerites. It was the last of four group portraits Fantin devoted to the artists and friends of his own world.