Still Life in Watercolors

dinner, replete with crystal ware, place settings, and chairs offered to the viewer.
Indeed, often his still lifes open onto the populated spaces of genre painting and are
indistinguishable from them. But the most important painter of expanded-space
bourgeois still lifes was Fantin-Latour, and where the example set by Chardin is not
felt in Caillebotte's luxury tabletops, it still underlies the work of Fantin-Latour, both
in his simple fruit pieces and in his more complex flower-piece table corners, whose
containers contrasted to loose fruit are reminiscent of the same device in Chardin's
work, and in his signature facture, which has something of the feel of Chardin's handling,
though much refined and muted. And Fantin-Latour was extremely important
for Cézanne, particularly for his flower pieces. 16
Figure 27
Henri Fantin-Latour
(French, 1836-1904}
St/7/ Life with Torso and
Flowers, 1874
Oil on canvas, 116 x 90 cm
(45 5 /s x 35 7 /ie in.)
Gôteborg, Sweden,
Gôteborgs Konstmuseum
59
THE LANDSCAPE OF STILL LIFE