Self-Portrait

By 1883 Henri Fantin-Latour was making a steady living in a way that surprised his Paris friends. His flower still lifes sold briskly in England, bought up by collectors there while French taste looked elsewhere. He knew the young Impressionists and had gathered them into his group portraits, yet he kept to his own quiet studio work and never exhibited alongside them. Here he turns the brush on himself, a man of about 47, plainly dressed against a dark background, looking out with the same level attention he gave his sitters. The painting joined the Uffizi's long-running gallery of artists' self-portraits, where painters from many countries are gathered by their own faces.