Portrait of Whistler

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) · 1865

Whistler’s good friend Henri Fantin-Latour originally included this portrait as part of a large composition called Le toast: Hommage à la Verit&‌eacute; (The Toast: Homage to Truth) that also depicted such avant-garde figures as the painter Edouard Manet and the poet Charles Baudelaire. The Frenchmen wore conventional black suits in the group portrait. Whistler, however, insisted on distinguishing himself by wearing a colorful Chinese robe. Fantin’s group portrait and Whistler’s painting The Princess from the Land of Porcelain were exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1865. Critics ridiculed Fantin’s work, and he later destroyed it, leaving only this fragment of Whistler.