UM_UL_020 A CORNER OF A TABLE _ HENRI FANTIN-LATOUR 1872 / KUMARI ANTON VAIM 2025
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13 h
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MWW Artwork of the Day (6/30/25)
Henri Fantin-Latour (French, 1836-1904)
A Corner Table (1872)
Oil on canvas, 160 x 225 cm.
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
An interesting group portrait of some of the literary lights of 1870s Paris. Seated (from left to right): The poets Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Léon Valade, Ernest d'Hervilly and Camille Pelletan; standing from left to right): Pierre Elzéar, Emile Blémont and Jean Aicard.
This is a group portrait as much as a testimony to the literary history of the 19th century, and the Parnassus poetry group in particular. A group of men are gathered around the far end of a table after a meal. Three are standing, from left to right: Elzéar Bonnier, Emile Blémont and Jean Aicard. Five are seated: Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, Léon Valade, Ernest d'Hervilly and Camille Pelletan. They are all dressed in black except one, Camille Pelletan, who is not a poet like the others but a politician. The central place is occupied by Emile Blémont, who bought the painting and gave it to the Louvre in 1910.
At least two figures are missing: Charles Baudelaire, to whom the painting was initially to have been a tribute, who died in 1867 and Albert Mérat who did not want to be painted in the company of the diabolic poets Verlaine and Rimbaud and was reputedly replaced by a bunch of flowers.
The painting was criticised for being too big: "Who advised Mr Fantin-Latour to give his table such epic, monumental proportions? There is a contradiction between the painting's ambitious dimensions and its subject matter that ends up being irritating."
(translated from the Museum website)
For more of this artist's work, see this MWW gallery/album:
* French Painting 1850-1900: Doré, Orientalism & the Academy

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