In the mid-nineteenth century, Paris served as the epicentre for artistic creation; artists flocked to the French capital in search of training, camaraderie, and, ultimately, success. Henri Fantin-Latour, Alphonse Legros, and James McNeill Whistler were amongst these hopeful artists in the 1850s. While each eventually created a thriving practise for himself, each also fought to establish his artistic career and identity during these early years. Because the narrative of a young, struggling artist is not an uncommon one, this stage is often brushed aside when examining the trajectory of these artists’ careers. However, such a dismissal does not allow for a full contextualization of an artist’s life and oeuvre. Fantin, Legros, and Whistler evidence this truth, both individually and as a small group. While attempting to define their maturing artistic identities, these three artists deliberately elected to join forces and become the Société des trois. This era bore witness to the birth of the artistic avant-garde, which elevated expression and individualism; with this in mind, the decision to develop a closed artistic society is unique. Fantin, Legros, and Whistler adhered to specific societal tenets and maintained loyalty to each other in an artistic environment that praised the individual. There are many reasons that supported their decision; for example, the Société enabled them to transition from the student to professional phases of their careers between 1858 and 1868. Eventually, as the choices the artists made in the formation of their artistic identities diverged, the Société was no longer necessary, and each member went his own way. In light of their decisions to unite as a formal society, Fantin, Legros, and Whistler’s period of maturation must be understood through the lens of the Société des trois. / Graduate / 2018-05-01

This thesis chronicles the development of Henri Fantin-Latour’s identity as a peintre-mélomane. Its purpose is to investigate how his multi-sensory impressions of music, particularly during performances of Richard Wagner’s operas and Hector Berlioz’s musical-dramatic works, would materialize into an aesthetic of vagueness. I examine the manner in which the scenic, acoustic, and acousmatic conditions in his physical environment heightened his awareness of a poetic and palpable sense of vagueness. I postulate that he aspired to simulate the sensorial aspects of his musical experiences in his operatic interpretations, lieder-inspired images, and allegorical fantasies. Through his inventive experimentation with lithography and his adaptation of painting techniques by his favorite old masters (most notably Eugène Delacroix), he developed a distinct facture that imbued his atmospheric prints, pastels, and paintings with an ineffable quality of vagueness. The correspondence between the auditory sensation, visual perception, and formal expression of the vague is also reflected in the picturesque language and musical nomenclature invoked by the contemporary criticism. The elusive sense of the musically vague in Fantin’s imaginative genre was a conspicuous leitmotif in the Salon reviews. An intertextual comparison between the musical discourse of the time and the critical reception of his artworks reveals absolute music to be a model of emulation. In light of music’s centrality in Fantin’s artistic enterprise, the conclusion explores the extent of Berlioz’s and Wagner’s aesthetic influence on his theory and practice.