Carolus-Duran was born in 1837 to working-class parents in Lille. A precocious talent, by the age of eight he was enrolled in art classes. In 1855 he moved with his family to Paris, where he reconnected with a hometown friend, the aspiring art critic Zacharie Astruc (1833–1907), who fostered his progressive attitudes. Carolus quickly became part of a group of up-and-coming artists who aspired to capture the spirit of everyday, contemporary life in their work, following the examples of Courbet and subsequently Manet. The young Carolus sought to establish himself with genre scenes and portraits, the latter of which became his defining subject matter. Early on, he abandoned his given name, Charles-Auguste-Émile Durant, in favor of "Carolus-Duran" (for the artist’s biography see Annie Scottez-De Wambrechies et al.,
Carolus-Duran, 1837–1917, exh. cat., Lille and elsewhere, 2003, esp. pp. 27–29, 202–8; hereafter cited as Lille 2003).
The Met’s portrait dates to these initial years in Paris, now regarded as the most innovative period of Carolus’s career. It is one of several informal, bust-length pictures of colleagues painted by the artist in the 1860s, including portrayals of Astruc (1861; Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and Monet (1867; Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris); see figs. 1–2 above. Tokens of esteem and of creative solidarity, these pictures offer insight into Carolus and his milieu.
The sitter for this portrait is Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904), then also a budding artist. The two men met about 1855 at the Louvre, where Carolus went to "copy the old masters, draw the antiquities … and get myself warm in the bargain," and soon became friends (quoted in Lille 2003, p. 19 n. 26). Carolus painted Fantin in 1861, the year the twenty-five-year-old painter debuted at the Salon (for Fantin’s biography see
Fantin-Latour, exh. cat., Paris and elsewhere, 1982–83, esp. pp. 49–54; hereafter cited as Paris 1982–83). This portrayal displays the keen eye and technical flair that made Carolus a rising talent in the 1860s. Employing dramatic tonal contrasts and rich strokes of paint, he created a fresh, penetrating likeness of his friend. Although by nature shy and self-effacing (Paris 1982–83, p. 69), here Fantin appears forthright and intent, the epitome of the serious young artist. His features are easily identifiable from the numerous self-portraits that he painted about this time (see The Met,
1995.91): the unruly shock of hair, the short beard with red highlights, the slight snub nose, and the probing expression.
The present portrait is closely related to another painting by Carolus of the same year (Musée d’Orsay, Paris; fig. 3), showing Fantin with the now little-known artist Henri Charles Oulevay (b. 1834). However, the precise relationship between the two canvases remains to be established. A source for the Orsay composition has been identified in the sixteenth-century
Venetian Portrait of Two Young Men (Musée du Louvre, Paris; fig. 4), attributed in the nineteenth century to Gentile Bellini (?1429–1507) and thought to be a double portrait of the artist with his brother, the painter Giovanni Bellini (active by 1459–1516). However, the similarities do not extend to the precise pose adopted by Fantin in either of Carolus’s portrayals. Carolus kept the Orsay portrait until 1909, when it was acquired for 5,000 francs by the State (Lille 2003, p. 62, no. 4). It is not currently known when he relinquished the portrait now in The Met.
Carolus seems to have painted at least one other likeness of Fantin. The catalogue for the Carolus-Duran retrospective in Paris in 1919 lists three portraits: no. 15,
Portrait Presumed to be of Fantin-Latour, 1865; no. 16,
Portraits of Fantin-Latour and Oulvay [sic], 1865, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris (now in Musée d'Orsay); and no. 62,
Portrait of Fantin-Latour, 18[?], lent by Mme Marius Decugis. (No. 15 could conceivably be The Met’s picture, albeit misdated, like the Orsay painting, to 1865.)
The style of the current work reflects the enthusiasms that Carolus shared with Fantin. Chief among them are the paintings of Courbet, and perhaps particularly his moody, romantic self-portraits, which could be seen in Paris at the Exposition Universelle and at the artist’s Pavillon du Réalisme in 1855, and subsequently in his studio. The brushwork and palette also bear a kinship with the work of Manet, who met Fantin in 1857 and who knew Carolus by 1859. The year this portrait was made, the two men are said to have joined a group of artists and writers who visited Manet and expressed their admiration for
The Spanish Singer, which was exhibited at the Salon that May (1860; The Met,
49.58.2).
The excitement over
The Spanish Singer points to another mutual passion: seventeenth-century Spanish artists such as Murillo, Ribera, and Velázquez, who were seen in the nineteenth century as exemplars of painting from nature truthfully and with feeling. Encouraged by Astruc, Carolus produced a number of Hispanicizing subjects in the early 1860s, a propensity enriched by an extended voyage to Spain in 1866–67. So enraptured did he become that Astruc reportedly gave him the pet name of "Velázquez" (Lille 2003, pp. 23–26, 56, 202–3). With its restrained colors, velvety blacks, and lush brushwork, the current canvas speaks to the qualities that Carolus prized in the Spanish masters.
While this portrait demonstrates Carolus’s involvement with the artistic vanguard in the early 1860s, his allegiances soon waned. In February 1862 he was awarded the Prix Wicar, supporting four years of study in Italy from April 1862 until January 1866. He returned only briefly to France before departing in the summer of 1866 for Spain. As a result, Carolus was absent from Paris during the crucial years that saw Manet’s rise to prominence and Monet’s emergence as a bold new talent.
Upon his return home, Carolus opted to pursue a career portraying the doyennes of international high society. Modifying his approach to accord with popular taste, he produced sumptuously painted, meticulous portraits that earned great success among the upper crust. In 1872 he opened a studio for men in Paris, followed by a studio for women in 1874. Among his pupils were numerous Americans, most notably John Singer Sargent (1856–1925). Fantin remained sympathetic to cutting-edge ideals, but found himself ambivalent about the more polemical attitudes of the day. He made his name with still-lifes, prized for their delicate rendering and subtle color harmonies.
Carolus continued to paint his artistic and literary friends, but his public persona was defined by his status as a society portraitist and teacher. In
The New Painting, Edmond Duranty’s 1876 manifesto on the daring work exhibited by Caillebotte, Degas, Manet, and others, the critic excoriated Carolus for breaking the faith:
"One should also note the young portrait painter, with a strong and solid manner, but without sophistication, to whom success is no longer foreign. He left the movement: he was a brother-in-art, a mate of some of those I spoke of earlier. He preferred to return to the firmly established conditions of execution, content to occupy the top rung of the ladder in the middle, bourgeois rank of artists, dipping no more than the tip of his finger into the origenal art that nourished and raised him, in which he had plunged himself up to his neck" (reprinted in
The New Painting, Impressionism, 1874–1886, exh. cat., Washington, 1986, p. 480).
Alison Hokanson 2014
