Un morceau de Schumann (at Edwin Edwards)
- Catalogue number
-
SO 0029
- Artist
-
Henri Fantin-Latour
- Printer
-
Auguste Delâtre
- Date
-
1864
- Medium
-
Etching
- Dimensions [to plate mark]
-
276 x 187 mm
- Catalogues
-
Druick and Hoog 1983, 43
- State
-
III/III
- Publication
-
Eaux-fortes moderns, troisième année, Cadart et Luquet 1864
Subject
Edwin and Ruth Edwards perform a work by Schumann. The sheet music was given to Mrs Edwards by Fantin-Latour and was described by him as ‘a serious gift’. The relationship between the artist and the Edwards' was complex but the couple's business and their home in Sunbury remained critical channels of communication between progressive French and British painters throughout the 1860 and 1870s.
Schumann had died in 1856 and in life composed no works specifically for flute and piano; the music being performed must therefore either be a posthumous commercial arrangement or the Edwards' own adaptation of a work intended for other instruments.
Uniquely amongst the members of the ‘Manet-Whistler circle’, Fantin made only two etchings in his lifetime and this example remains his only published work in the medium. He was a prolific lithographer however, producing several hundred imaginative lithographs on Wagnerian themes and as pictorial ‘homages’ to Romantic writers, artists and composers.
Edouard Manet also considered using Ruth Edwards to approach the London art market, visiting Sunbury as an objective of his short trip to London in 1868. He later lent her his painting The Grand Canal of Venice (Blue Venice) (1875) to show to British clients.
Printing
This impression, which lacks both the text and the blind stamp of Cadart et Luquet, appears to be a sheet from the third annual portfolio of the Societe des aquafortistes' Eaux-forts modernes. It is likely to have been printed under the direction of Auguste Delâtre.
History
Gallery label: Ferdinand Roten Gallery, Baltimore MD. ‘Fantin-Latour, ‘Concert’ original etching, 1864, stock # 115-L-11’
Purchased online from Sturgis Antiques, Baltimore, Maryland, US on 8 November 2023. Conserved by Raymond McChrystal in 2024
