Homage to Delacroix 160×225 cm 1864 Musée d'Orsay, Paris Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) came from high society. A contemporary of the Impressionists, he stood apart, belonging to no school. Throughout his life, he painted numerous group portraits. From his early Homage to Delacroix through The Studio at Batignolles and A Corner of the Table, he vividly portrayed the most avant-garde writers, poets, and radical painters of his time. In Homage to Delacroix, the young man in the white shirt is the artist himself; others include Baudelaire, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, and Rimbaud, as well as Whistler, Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Bazille, all part of Fantin’s portrait of the avant-garde art circle of his era.

He also had opportunities to paint flowers and still lifes with flowers, for Fantin was an expert flower painter. The writer Zacharie Astruc wrote: “The flowers painted by Fantin are so outstanding, charming, eye-catching, and moving. Especially their charming rhythmic tones and freshness, natural and lively, quite pleasing, a captivating beauty.” He added: “Fantin seems to be a poet of floral form; his expression is so relaxed, as if it were the art of nature itself.”