Henri Fantin-Latour, Annual Chrysanthemums, 1889

When Henri Fantin-Latour painted his first floral still life in 1854, France’s traditional hierarchy of artistic genres was in flux.¹ For centuries, history painting had reigned supreme, followed, in descending order, by portraiture, genre scenes, landscapes, and, at the very bottom, still lifes. The latter two categories were held in low esteem by the Académie des Beaux-Arts because they lacked human figures. During the nineteenth century, however, French artists upended these rankings by favoring the very genres that the establishment had long belittled.² Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) and Gustave Courbet (1819–77) experimented with floral compositions in the 1840s and 1860s, respectively, and many of the Impressionists did likewise between the early 1860s and mid-1880s. Claude Monet (1840–1926), for one, produced at least twenty-two flower pictures between 1878 and 1885, several of which were ambitious in scale and sold well with collectors.³ However, the combined output of all these artists paled in comparison to that of Fantin-Latour, who painted somewhere between five hundred and 850 floral still lifes during his career.⁴ Rather than dabbling in flower pictures like some of his peers, Fantin-Latour made them a cornerstone of his production, and he owed much of his success to their commercial appeal.

The collectors most receptive to Fantin-Latour’s floral works were members of the English upper middle class. During the 1860s, American expatriate painter James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) and Surrey-based dealers Edwin (1823–79) and Ruth (1833–1907) Edwards stoked demand for Fantin-Latour’s flower pictures in England. They corresponded regularly with Fantin-Latour in Paris, sharing tips about interested buyers and requesting still lifes with particular dimensions. Whistler, for example, wrote to Fantin-Latour on February 3, 1864, saying, “You must do two flower pictures the same size, as those you have just done for Mr. Ionides—You will get 150 frs. for each.”⁵ Thanks to these efforts on his behalf, Fantin-Latour built up a steady clientele across the Channel and earned much-needed income from the sale of his floral compositions. By 1871, he had formalized his business relationship with the Edwardses and designated them as his official agents in England.⁶ This mutually beneficial partnership persisted for more than fifty years, with Ruth handling all sales of Fantin-Latour’s work in England after Edwin’s death in 1879.

Annual Chrysanthemums is a mature still life created explicitly for the English market. Like most of Fantin-Latour’s late flower pictures, it took shape in the Norman town of Buré, on a family estate that his wife and fellow still-life painter, Victoria Fantin-Latour (née Dubourg, 1840–1926), had inherited from her uncle in 1880.⁷ Small and bucolic, with a population of fewer than 250, Buré offered the couple a pleasant escape from the hubbub of Paris during the summer.⁸ Their property included a lush garden with several arched trellises and a large variety of plants, as seen in a pair of photographs taken there in 1900 (Fig. 1).⁹ This outdoor haven provided Henri Fantin-Latour with a constant supply of blooms for his paintings. According to portraitist Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942), who visited the Fantin-Latours at Buré, his friend began each day in the same manner: “Immediately after breakfast, the artist, in an old straw hat, his neck wrapped in a summer scarf, and always wearing his slippers, went to the flowerbeds and picked the more colorful flowers that had blossomed during the night.”¹⁰ After making his selection, Fantin-Latour would choose a vase from among the receptacles given to him by Ruth Edwards for this express purpose, arrange the bouquet with a practiced eye, and finally place it on a table against a neutral backdrop. He always prepared his canvases the night before, allowing him to start work straightaway. A photograph of Fantin-Latour in his studio at Buré, seated with a blank canvas before a bouquet of freshly cut peonies, attests to this working method (Fig. 2).¹¹ Due to the ephemeral nature of Fantin-Latour’s motifs, he endeavored to finish his still lifes within one working day.¹²

In addition to being a master of efficiency, Fantin-Latour was adept at depicting different species of flowers. The multicolored blossoms in the Nelson-Atkins painting are all examples of Chrysanthemum carinatum or Ismelia carinata, known colloquially as the annual chrysanthemum or painted daisy.¹³ An annual plant native to Morocco, Chrysanthemum carinatum blooms from summer to fall and is widely cultivated in temperate parts of the world, including France. Due to the distinctive, ring-like pattern of its disc and ray florets, it has long been a popular ornamental plant. Indeed, many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European monarchs grew painted daisies in their palace gardens. Saxon king Frederick Augustus I (1750–1827), for one, cultivated them at Pillnitz Castle and commissioned botanical illustrator Jacob Friedrich (German, 1746–1813) to produce a hand-colored engraving of the flower (Fig. 3).¹⁴ In Friedrich’s rendering, the central stalk is crowned by three blooms with crimson centers and concentric bands of yellow and white, closely resembling several of the flowers in Fantin-Latour’s picture. The other color combinations in the Kansas City bouquet are also accurate, for painted daisies come in a medley of colors. Although Fantin-Latour painted various species of chrysanthemums and other related plants in the Asteraceae family with some frequency,¹⁵ he seldom portrayed Chrysanthemum carinatum: in fact, the Nelson-Atkins still life is the sole example known to this author.

Compositionally, the Kansas City painting is simple and nearly symmetrical, with the vase centered attractively in the picture space. This clarity of structure is consistent with Fantin-Latour’s late work. Whereas during the 1860s and early 1870s he often painted complex arrangements of flowers, fruit, drinking vessels, and utensils, by the 1880s he preferred sparer still lifes with fewer objects.¹⁶ The stone shelf on which the Nelson-Atkins bouquet rests also appears in other pictures by Fantin-Latour from earlier in the decade, such as Roses in a Cup (1882; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), and the dark green pedestal vase resurfaces—its appearance slightly altered—in both Still Life with Roses in a Vase (1888; Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Larkspur (Fig. 4). The latter demonstrates Fantin-Latour’s willingness to play with form when it suited his aesthetic aims. Although the vases in Annual Chrysanthemums and Larkspur have nearly identical bases and lower stems, their openings are noticeably different. In the Kansas City work, the vase tapers inward toward the top, cinching the flowers, but in the Glasgow still life it widens further, giving the larkspurs more breathing room and their arrangement a fan-like shape.¹⁷ Nevertheless, the paintings are more alike than not. A single, wilted flower has fallen from both bouquets, giving the pictures a mildly melancholic air, and their balanced, pared-down compositions have much in common.

When Annual Chrysanthemums debuted at London’s Royal Academy of Arts exhibition in May 1890, critics responded enthusiastically to Fantin-Latour’s brushwork, palette, and realism. A writer for The Athenaeum, having enjoyed a sneak preview of the show two days before its public unveiling, pronounced Fantin-Latour’s three floral still lifes “delightful.”¹⁸ In another review three weeks later he referred specifically to the painting now at the Nelson-Atkins: “M. Fantin’s Chrysanthèmes d’Été is pure and brilliant as painted flowers ought to be.”¹⁹ Harry Quilter, an arts journalist for The Universal Review, was equally impressed. “Few things are more perfect in the present gallery than the chrysanthemums painted by M. Fantin against a plain gray background,” he wrote. He praised Fantin-Latour’s “quiet fidelity to nature” and compared the picture favorably to Sir John Lavery’s (1856–1941) The Bridge at Gretz, also on display that year.²⁰ A third critic was disappointed by Fantin-Latour’s Wagnerian painting, The First Scene of “The Rhinegold,” but extolled his floral compositions as “absolutely unrivalled.”²¹ French visitors to the London exhibition also expressed admiration for Fantin-Latour’s still lifes, with Parisian commentator Paul Leroi describing them as “very successful.”²² The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, a testament to the widespread appreciation of Fantin-Latour’s flower paintings in nineteenth-century England.

Following the Royal Academy exhibition, Annual Chrysanthemums passed through several private collectors and dealers, beginning with Ruth Edwards, before landing with gallerist Étienne Bignou (1891–1950) by the early 1930s. Bignou lent the picture to a thematic exhibition organized by Knoedler Galleries in New York called “Flowers” by French Painters in November 1932. The American public responded just as warmly to Annual Chrysanthemums as their English counterparts had forty years earlier. Critic and Metropolitan Museum of Art researcher Margaretta Salinger complimented Knoedler on choosing the still lifes “with so much good taste and discretion” and singled out the “two very charming vases by Fantin-Latour” for special notice.²³ She selected Annual Chrysanthemums to illustrate her article (Fig. 5), as did Ralph Flint in his own effusive review for Art News. Flint waxed poetic about “the brilliant galaxy of French pictures . . . illustrating the Gallic genius in flower painting” and declared Fantin-Latour’s floral contributions “precise and stately and delicately rendered.”²⁴ The timing of this exhibition, and the critical support for Fantin-Latour that it engendered, brought Annual Chrysanthemums to the attention of the Nelson-Atkins trustees, who acquired it soon after. When critic Minna K. Powell announced this purchase in the April 1, 1933, issue of the Kansas City Star, she emphasized that the museum board had secured “one of the loveliest canvases in the recent ‘Flower Show’ at the Knoedler Galleries” and highlighted its “graceful arrangement, sense of tonality, and the dewy freshness of its flowers.” Her article whetted readers’ appetite to see the Fantin-Latour picture themselves at the museum’s grand opening eight months later.²⁵

Created by the most esteemed and prolific French still life painter of the nineteenth century, Annual Chrysanthemums is a prime example of Fantin-Latour’s mature approach to flower pieces at Buré. It showcases not only his command of color and composition but also his knack for representing all manner of plants. More than ninety years after its acquisition, it remains the only floral picture and the only work in oil by Fantin-Latour in the museum’s collection.

Notes

1. Fantin-Latour’s first recorded still life is Flowers, 1854, oil on canvas, 18 3/16 x 16 5/16 in. (46.2 x 41.4 cm), Museum voor Schone Kunsten Gent, Belgium, Inv. 1914-AY, https://www.mskgent.be/en/collection/1914-ay.

2. For this history, see Mitchell Merling, “The Path to the Modern Floral Still Life: Academy to Avant-Garde,” in Heather MacDonald and Mitchell Merling, Working Among Flowers: Floral Still-Life Painting in Nineteenth-Century France, exh. cat. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 15–27.

3. Sylvie Patry, “Impressionist Flower Paintings and the Market,” trans. Chris Miller, in MacDonald and Merling, Working Among Flowers, 35.

4. Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier estimates that Fantin-Latour made between 750 and 850 flower paintings, while Laurent Salomé suggests a range of five hundred to six hundred. See Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier, “Fantin-Latour, peintre de fleurs,” Gazette des beaux-arts 113, no. 1442 (March 1989): 138; and Laurent Salomé, “La vie avec les fleurs,” in Laure Dalon, Fantin-Latour: À fleur de peau, exh. cat. (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2016), 41. A more accurate tally may emerge when Sylvie Brame and François Lorenceau publish their revised catalogue raisonné of Fantin-Latour’s oeuvre.

5. Whistler to Fantin-Latour, January 4–February 3, 1864, Pennell-Whistler Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, PWC 1/33/15. Transcribed and translated in Margaret F. MacDonald, Patricia de Montfort, and Nigel Thorp, eds., The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, 1855–1903, online edition, University of Glasgow, 08036, https://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/date/more/?cid=8036&year=1864&month=01&rs=1. “Il faut que tu fasse encore deux bouquets de la meme [sic] grandeur, que ceux que tu viens de faire pour M. Ionides—On te les paie 150. fs. piece [sic].” Emphasis in the original. Translations by Brigid M. Boyle unless otherwise noted.

6. Douglas Druick and Michel Hoog, eds., Fantin-Latour, exh. cat. (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada for the Corporation of the National Museums of Canada, 1983), 216.

7. For Victoria Fantin-Latour’s life and career, see Elizabeth Kane, “Victoria Dubourg: The Other Fantin-Latour,” Woman’s Art Journal 9, no. 2 (Fall 1988–Winter 1989): 15–21.

8. For census data, see Claude Motte and Marie-Christine Vouloir, “Buré,” Des villages de Cassini aux communes d’aujourd’hui, Laboratoire de démographie historique, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, accessed April 3, 2024, http://cassini.ehess.fr/fr/html/fiche.php?select_resultat=6306. Buré had 234 residents in 1881 and 204 residents in 1886. Its population dwindled throughout the 1900s, falling below one hundred in 1975. The town is a modest 565 hectares, or 2.2 square miles.

9. For a painting of this space, see Victoria Fantin-Latour, The Garden at Buré, 19th century, oil on canvas, 12 5/8 x 15 15/16 in. (32 x 40.5 cm), Musée de Grenoble, MG 2511, https://www.navigart.fr/grenoble/artwork/victoria-fantin-latour-nee-victoria-dubourg-le-jardin-de-bure-orne-60000000005285.

10. Jacques-Émile Blanche, Propos de Peintre: De David à Degas (Paris: Émile-Paul frères, 1919), 42. “Le peintre, sous un vieux chapeau de paille, le cou enveloppé d’un foulard d’été, toujours chaussé de pantoufles, dès après son petit déjeuner va cueillir dans les plates-bandes ce que la nuit a fait éclore de plus coloré.”

11. For more on Fantin-Latour’s working method, see Blanche, Propos de Peintre, 42–48.

12. Per the testimony of Fantin-Latour’s Parisian dealer, Gustave Tempelaere. See Druick and Hoog, Fantin-Latour, 270.

13. I am indebted to Craig Freeman, senior curator of botany at the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, University of Kansas; and Lena Struwe, director of the Chrysler Herbarium and Mycological Collection and professor at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers University, for this identification and the description that follows.

14. Friedrich’s engraving was part of a large, multi-artist project begun in 1785 and completed in 1840 under the aegis of Frederick Augustus II (1797–1854), successor to Frederick Augustus I. For a brief overview, see R. G. C. Desmond, “Some Early Cultivated Plants,” Kew Bulletin 22, no. 3 (1968): 392.

15. See, for instance, Still Life with Chrysanthemums, 1862, oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 21 7/8 in. (46 x 55.6 cm), Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1978-1-16, https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/72087; Chrysanthemums, 1874, oil on canvas, 21 3/4 x 25 1/2 in. (55.2 x 64.8 cm), The Burrell Collection, Glasgow, no. 35.260, https://collections.glasgowmuseums.com/mwebcgi/mweb?request=record;id=37412;type=101; Yellow Chrysanthemums, 1879, oil on canvas, 24 x 19 1/16 in. (61 x 48.4 cm), Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, no. 1795, https://collections.glasgowmuseums.com/mwebcgi/mweb?request=record;id=166784;type=101; and Large Bouquet of Chrysanthemums, 1882, oil on canvas, 24 1/2 x 22 in. (62.2 x 55.9 cm), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2019.147, https://high.org/collection/large-bouquet-of-chrysanthemums-grand-bouquet-de-chrysanthemes/. My thanks to Pegeen Blank for her assistance with this research.

16. Druick and Hoog, Fantin-Latour, 257.

17. Laurent Salomé was the first to note this exercise of artistic license. See Salomé, “La vie avec les fleurs,” 44.

18. “Fine Arts: The Royal Academy (First Notice),” Athenaeum, no. 3262 (May 3, 1890): 575.

19. “Fine Arts: The Royal Academy (Third and Concluding Notice),” Athenaeum, no. 3265 (May 24, 1890): 680. The Nelson-Atkins painting was exhibited as Chrysanthèmes d’été (Summer Chrysanthemums) in reference to the plant’s primary growing season.

20. Harry Quilter, “The Art of England: The Royal Academy,” Universal Review 7, no. 25 (May 1890): 45. For Lavery’s painting, see Impressionist and 19th Century Art Pt. 1, Christie’s, London, December 8, 1998, lot 17.

21. “Royal Academy,” Observer (London), May 11, 1890, 5.

22. Paul Leroi, “Chronique des Expositions: Les trois principales Expositions de Londres,” Courrier de l’art 10, no. 27 (July 4, 1890): 214. “Très réussis.”

23. Margaretta Salinger, “On View at the New York Galleries,” Parnassus 4, no. 6 (November 1932): 9.

24. Ralph Flint, “Knoedler Holds Important Exhibit of French Flower Paintings Under the Auspices of Étienne Bignou,” Art News 31, no. 7 (November 12, 1932): 10.

25. M[inna] K. P[owell], “In Gallery and Studio,” Kansas City Star, April 1, 1933, 5. The Nelson-Atkins opened its doors on December 10, 1933.

The painting Annual Chrysanthemums by Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) is one of over five hundred floral still-life paintings made by the artist between 1864 and 1898.¹ Information about the original canvas is limited, as the tacking margins have been removed and the outer edges are now covered by retouching. The x-radiograph does not show any cusping along the outer edges, suggesting that the canvas was cut from a larger piece of primed material. The painting is lined, obscuring the reverse of the original canvas, along with any colormen stamps or inscriptions that may be present.²

The plain-weave canvas was commercially prepared with a white ground, visible on the peaks of the canvas weave texture, between brushstrokes in the background, and along the bottom edge of the canvas. Microscopy examination indicates that the ground layer was first covered with a transparent beige imprimatura. Fantin-Latour typically applied a medium-rich pigment layer to seal the absorbent ground of his commercially primed canvases, which provided a base color for his compositions.³

Over the imprimatura, Fantin-Latour blocked in the background of Annual Chrysanthemums with pinkish-gray paint, composed of coarser pigment particles than the underlying layer. This pinkish-gray paint continues beneath the green vase and the stone shelf, indicating that this layer was applied overall. In addition, medium-rich brown paint was selectively applied to areas of shadow for the vase and stone shelf prior to painting these compositional elements (Fig. 6).

Using a coarse-bristled brush and short stipple-like brushwork, Fantin-Latour produced a softly textured pinkish-gray atmosphere to contrast with his still life (Fig. 7). He achieved an even greater tonal effect in the background through scraping the paint surface to reveal the white ground and the pronounced texture of the canvas.⁴ A penknife may have been used to scrape the partially dried paint, evident by the soft edges of the diagonal incised lines.⁵ This painting technique has been observed in the background of Gladioli and Roses (ca. 1880) in the Guildhall Art Gallery.⁶

Although no underdrawing was detected with infrared reflectography, dark brown paint strokes mark the silhouette of the vase, now partially obscured by retouching (Fig. 8). In the bouquet, a few finely painted lines correspond to the placement of an absent petal in a white chrysanthemum (Fig. 9). Similarly, dark bluish-purple and glazy pink lines of paint may have been used to position the foliage along the outer right edge of the bouquet (Fig. 10). Fantin-Latour’s minimal use of sketch lines points to his confidence in rendering the Nelson-Atkins composition, likely drawing on his experience of painting floral still lifes for over two decades.⁷

Fantin-Latour used a diverse range of brushwork techniques to execute his floral arrangement, including thick strokes of impasto, fine glazes, scumbles, and dabs of paint. For the vase, he layered semitransparent green and brown paint over the pinkish-gray background to emulate the translucence of the glass vase (Fig. 11). He blocked in the shape of the vase with thin washes of dark green paint. A few dabs of opaque brownish-green paint established the mid-tones, and a few dabs of thick white paint were carefully placed to highlight the reflective stem of the vase (Fig. 12). Final strokes of fluid dark brown paint strengthen the contours of the vase.

As with the vase, Fantin-Latour applied washes to indicate the placement of the foliage. It is evident that reserves were left for a few of the white chrysanthemums, as the pinkish-gray background is clearly visible below the flowers, and the washes are slightly beneath the edge of the petals (Fig. 13). However, it is unclear how systematic this underpainting is throughout the bouquet. The foliage consists of dark washes, followed by thick applications of opaque paint for individual stems and leaves. The extent of wet-over-wet paint applications in the bouquet indicates that the foliage and flowers were painted concurrently (Fig. 14). The flowers consist of thick painterly strokes of impasto for the individual petals, followed by dabs of opaque and semitransparent paint. Examination of Annual Chrysanthemums with ultraviolet (UV) radiation revealed a bright orange-red fluorescence in the flowers, which is characteristic of the organic pigment madder lake (Fig. 15).⁸

During the painting process, Fantin-Latour reinstated the background color in the foliage by dabbing pinkish-gray paint on top of the green layers (Fig. 16). There are several instances where the artist used brushstrokes of green paint to obscure flower petals that were no longer part of the composition. Additionally, a few petals were abandoned during the painting process, resulting in incomplete flowers (Fig. 17).

Fantin-Latour rendered the form of the single flower and stone shelf with great economy, using the pinkish-gray background as a base color. With dry brushwork, he applied thick scumble-like applications of white and light blue paint with occasional streaks of partially mixed dark purple, bright blue, and yellow. Without magnification, the presence of these vivid colors that echo those of the bouquet is too subtle to discern (Fig. 18).

The painting is in good condition. In 1959, the piece was wax lined, and the original auxiliary support was replaced with a four-member, expansion-bolt stretcher.⁹ As a result of the lining process, the horizontal weave of the original canvas is more pronounced. Paint abrasion has occurred along the bottom edge, yet the impasto of the flowers does not appear to have been flattened from the lining process. A few age cracks have formed in the impasto. The painting has a degraded, yellowed natural-resin varnish that fluoresces green when examined with UV light. In addition, there are localized areas of dark, non-fluorescing retouching, predominantly along the outer edges of the composition.

Prior to the recent 2024 treatment, Annual Chrysanthemums was believed to bear only the signature “Fantin” in bright red paint in the upper right corner. In an October 17, 1949, letter to Nelson-Atkins director Paul Gardner, the dealer Julien Tempelaere stated: “Fantin-Latour signed and dated it [the painting], but the date, which was just following the signature, has been taken off by one of the owners.”¹⁰ Although the owner’s motives are not explicitly stated, it is possible that they intended for the painting to be perceived as an earlier still life by Fantin-Latour, thereby increasing its financial value. The extent of overpaint present in this area was confirmed with ultraviolet (UV) radiation (Fig. 19), and selective cleaning of the varnish and overpaint revealed the damaged remnants of the date “89” and some residual light gray and brown overpaint (Fig. 20).¹¹ Archival images verify that these changes to the date occurred after the painting’s completion in 1889 and before its acquisition by the Nelson-Atkins in 1933.¹² Nearly a century after its acquisition, the painting is displayed in the museum’s gallery with its original date now carefully retouched and restored (Fig. 21).

Notes

1. For the estimated number of floral still-life paintings by Fantin-Latour, see the accompanying curatorial essay by Brigid M. Boyle.

2. Colorman stamps of Hardy-Alan (1859–1909) have been noted on the reverse of Fantin-Latour’s paintings dating from 1873 to 1892. Documentary evidence indicates that the artist purchased primed canvases, stretchers, and tubed paints from Hardy-Alan from 1861 to 1904. Barbara A. Ramsay, “A Note on Fantin’s Technique,” Fantin-Latour, exh. cat. (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1983), 55.

3. Fantin-Latour preferred to apply imprimatura layers ranging from pale grays to browns and dark reds. Ramsay, “A Note on Fantin’s Technique,” 55.

4. Joyce Hill Stoner refers to this surface aesthetic as “weavism,” where rubbed-down paint reveals the canvas weave as part of the visual effect. Joyce Hill Stoner, “Materials for Immateriality,” in Like Breath on Glass: Whistler, Inness, and the Art of Painting Softly, ed. Marc Simpson, Wanda M. Corn, and C. Hartley, exh. cat. (Williamstown: Clark Art Institute, 2008), 92. Christina Young, “History of Fabric Supports,” in Conservation of Easel Paintings, ed. Joyce Hill Stoner and Rebecca Rushfield (New York: Routledge, 2012), 141.

5. According to Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861–1942), Fantin-Latour “scraped the background with his penknife, as if to suggest the trellis, the shaky and misty atmosphere.” English translation found in Eduardo Lourenço, Olivier Meslay, and Vincent Pomarède, Henri Fantin-Latour, 1836–1904, exh. cat. (Lisbon: Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, 2009), 258. For the French text, see Jacques-Emile Blanche, “Fantin Latour,” La Revue de Paris, May 15, 1906, 310: “Il gratte le fond de la pointe du canif, comme pour suggérer le treillis, le tremblé, la buée de l’atmosphère.”

6. Observations made during the treatment of Gladioli and Roses; see Claire Shepherd, “Conservation of ‘Gladioli and Roses’ by Henri Fantin-Latour,” City of London, February 15, 2024: https://www.thecityofldn.com/article/conservation-of-gladioli-and-roses-by-henri-fantin-latour/.

7. See the accompanying curatorial essay by Brigid M. Boyle.

8. Madder lake is an organic pigment made from the madder plant and used in dyes. Madder has been identified in Fantin-Latour’s paintings such as A Basket of Roses (1890) and The Rosy Wealth of June (1886). Jo Kirby, Marika Spring, Katherine Higgitt, “The Technology of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Red Lake Pigments,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 28 (2007): 91.

9. James Roth, “Department of Conservation,” in Annual Report for 1959, Nelson-Atkins Archives, Kansas City, MO, RG-98, series II, box RG98.05, folder 5, p. 109.

10. Julian Tempelaere (1876–1961) knew Fantin-Latour personally, since his father, Gustave, was one of the artist’s key dealers late in his life. Letter from Julien Tempelaere to Paul Gardner, October 17, 1949, NAMA curatorial files. The author is grateful to Brigid M. Boyle, Bloch Family Foundation Doctoral fellow, who first raised questions about the date. Brigid M. Boyle to Mary Schafer, April 22, 2024, NAMA conservation file, 33-15/2.

11. Sophia Boosalis, August 30, 2024, treatment report, Nelson-Atkins conservation file, 33-15/2.

12. Correspondence from Sylvie Brame to Brigid M. Boyle, April 23, 2024, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files, 33-15/2.