Muze van de muziek met Amor 1905

Henri Fantin-Latour made this lithograph, titled "Muze van de muziek met Amor," where a muse sits playing her instrument, sometime between 1836 and 1904. I am thinking about the intimacy of the process - the scraping and the scratching of the lithographic stone. The artist, Fantin-Latour, is deep in conversation with his medium. And look, it’s all in greyscale! So the tonal modulations are doing all the work. It has a softness, a kind of hazy dreaminess. I feel like he must have had a real tenderness toward his subject. The muse’s body seems to emerge slowly from the lithographic marks. And those cherubic forms... Fantin-Latour's figures are rooted in classical mythology. They're an extension of the work of artists who came before him. I feel like that’s the thing about painting: it’s a conversation that goes on and on. We are all just trying to find new ways to say the same thing. That’s what keeps us going.