La Lecture

Fantin-Latour showed this at the Paris Salon of 1877, the same season the Impressionists were mounting their own rebel exhibition a short walk away. He knew those painters well and was a friend of Manet, yet he stayed with the official Salon and its sober, carefully finished manner, which is what you see here. Two women sit in black against a bare wall, one reading, the other looking off and not quite listening. The woman on the left was his sister-in-law, Charlotte Dubourg, who modelled for him often over the years. Almost the only warmth in the room is the patterned cloth on the table and a small vase of flowers. He sold the canvas to the city of Lyon near the end of his life.