Ignace-Henri-Théodore Fantin-Latour, 'Still Life with Glass Jug, Fruit and Flowers', 1861

A single mop-headed rose is caught in an intense beam of clear light, which also glitters down the graceful sweep of the handle of the slender jug placed opposite. Fantin-Latour has left the rest of the picture in semi-darkness, making it difficult to see which of the fruit in the pewter dish are plums and which are apples. They nestle in a bed of leaves in an array of soft, deep colours from purple to mossy green; the bright red of the large apple serves to brighten the picture. The elegance of the jug is contrasted with the plain glass tumbler into which the flowers have been unceremoniously pushed. They stand on a mahogany table that still glows richly in what little general light remains, perhaps from a dying fire.

We are left wondering how the rose can be so brightly lit without casting a shadow on the wall behind. Later in his career, Fantin-Latour continued to use a bare wall as a background for his bouquets, but they were often lighter and brighter, as we can see in A Basket of Roses, also in the National Gallery’s collection.

In composition, the painting recalls the works of François Bonvin, Fantin-Latour’s contemporary, who was inspired by Dutch still-life painting of the seventeenth century. But in its stillness and feeling of transience – the translucence of the glass, the single blossom about to lose its petals – the painting seems to owe something to the eighteenth-century French still-life artist Chardin. In his painting House of Cards, a precarious construction of cards acts as a symbol of the brevity of life, and there is a hint of this thought in Fantin-Latour’s painting. In spite of the costly jug and flowers, it has a melancholy air – as if a door has shut and left the house empty except for the memory of the few things on the table.

The delicate little picture was painted while Fantin-Latour was working in Courbet’s studio in Paris. He found Courbet ‘charming’, but picked up little of the older artist’s robust style (compare this picture to Courbet’s Still Life with Apples and a Pomegranate, painted ten years after Fantin-Latour’s picture). Nor does the painting have the confident technique that Fantin-Latour showed later in his career, in paintings such as The Rosy Wealth of June. But we see the seeds sown of his sensitive portrayal of flowers, which won him success as the most sought after decorative artist of his time.