Detail of a Portrait of a Woman by Fantin-Latour in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 2011

Portrait of a Woman,1885

Object Details

Artist: Henri Fantin-Latour (French, Grenoble 1836–1904 Buré)

Date: 1885

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 39 1/2 x 32 in. (100.3 x 81.3 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1910

Accession Number: 10.41


A notebook kept by Fantin’s wife is said to record the circumstances surrounding this picture. The sitter called herself Mme Leroy, a name the artist suspected was false; and she insisted on paying for her portrait in advance. She was accompanied to some of her sittings by an American named Becker, who also commissioned a likeness of himself from Fantin, dated the following year (Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass.). The couple’s full identities, and the nature of their relationship, remain unknown.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436295