Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) was born on 14 January 1836 in Grenoble, the son of the painter Théodore Fantin-Latour, who gave him his first drawing lessons. He made his career in Paris, in the circle of the painters and writers who gathered around Manet, and became a friend of Manet and Whistler.
He is remembered for two very different kinds of picture. The first is the group portrait of the Paris avant-garde: Homage to Delacroix (1864), which shows Baudelaire, Manet, Whistler and others gathered around a portrait of Delacroix, and A Studio at Batignolles (1870), a tribute to Manet that includes Monet, Renoir and Zola. Both are now in the Musée d’Orsay. The second is the flower still life, painted with a quiet, sober realism that was prized by collectors, especially in England.
Later he married the painter Victoria Dubourg, and spent his summers on her family’s estate at Buré, in Normandy. He died there on 25 August 1904 and is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.