works are said by his enlightened critic, M. Arsene Alexandre, to have a
masterly quality of their own, to be far removed from the
conventionality of facsimiles, and to bear upon an underlying fidelity
of transcription an impress of individual sentiment. He sought to be
faithful to the originals beyond external imitation, by seeking to
render the original tone of the painting in its first freshness, as it
appeared before time and varnish had yellowed and darkened it. He thus
made himself familiar with the technical methods of the great periods of
painting, and, coming into his inheritance of modern ideas and ideals,
he was able to achieve a beauty of execution much too rarely sought by
his contemporaries, although his intimate companions like himself
frequented the Louvre with a considerable assiduity, spending upon the
old masters the enthusiasm which they withheld from the later academic
school of painting.

His earlier subjects were largely Biblical and historical. He then
passed to domestic scenes and in 1859, 1861, and 1863 was painting his
pictures of _Les Liseurs_ and _Les Brodeuses_ which showed the charming
face of his sister with her sensitive smiling mouth and softly modeled
brows, and later that of his wife. At the Salon of 1859 he and Whistler
both submitted subjects drawn from family life, Whistler his _At the
Piano_ with his own sister and his niece, little Annie Haden, for the
models, and Fantin his painting of young women embroidering and reading,
only to have their canvases refused. Fantin was not, however, a martyr
to his predilections in art. He early obtained admission to the Salon
although he had enough rejected work to permit him to appear among the
painters exhibiting in the famous little "Salon des Refuses" of 1863. He
received medals and official recognitions. But his modesty of taste led
him to hold himself somewhat apart and exclusive among those who shared
his likings. His portrait of himself, painted in 1858, shows a dreamy
young man with serious, almost solemn, eyes, sitting before his easel,
and looking into the distance with the expression of one who sees
visions.

As a matter of fact he did see visions and attempted to fix them with
his art. An ardent lover of music, he was eager to translate the
emotions aroused by it into the terms of his own art. As early as 1859
he was in England, to which he returned in 1861 and 1864, and while
there he was surrounded by a group of people who sha