Flowers from Normandy

The flowers here were cut in a garden in Normandy. After his marriage in 1876 Fantin-Latour spent his summers at Buré, in the Orne, on the country property of his wife's family. His wife, Victoria Dubourg, painted still lifes herself. The flower pictures belonged to that season, made while the garden was in bloom, with portraits and other work filling the rest of the year. He signed this canvas Fantin 87, the year he turned 51. Beside the tall glass vase a single rose lies on the table. It hung for decades in Amsterdam under the flatter title Still Life with Flowers, having reached a public collection there through a collector's bequest in 1922.