Omaggio a Delacroix

Eugene Delacroix, the great Romantic painter, died in 1863, and Fantin-Latour was disturbed by how thin the funeral procession had been. So he organised a portrait in paint instead. Ten writers and artists gather in dark coats around a framed image of the dead man, copied from an old photograph. The Salon of 1864 found the group stiff and gloomy and complained that it looked photographic. Several of the mourners were little known then and became famous later. The poet Baudelaire sits at the right, Manet and Whistler stand on either side of the portrait, and Fantin himself looks out at us in a white shirt, a palette in his hand.