A Rose a Day No.24

This is an oil painting by the French artist Henri Fantin-Latour entitled ‘A Basket of Roses’, and it was painted in 1890. It’s in the National Gallery, London.

Fantin-Latour imbues his floral still-lifes with an animation that makes them seem invested with life. As a result, however, it becomes difficult to identify which specific roses he depicts, although it is certainly still possible, and I can with some confidence identify Centifolias, Tea Roses, Noisette, and what looks like a Hybrid Perpetual or Hybrid Tea.

There is a wonderful pink rose called ‘Fantin-Latour’. But it in fact has nothing directly to do with the artist, and turned up as a seedling in an English garden in the mid-twentieth century. As the Encyclopedia of Roses remarks: ‘Although often classed among the Centifolias, it is clearly a modern hybrid, a prototype of David Austin’s English Roses.’ (146) I have a specimen in my garden in France. It’s a robust shrub, with blousy blush-pink  and fragrant blooms and nice dark leaves, but it only blossoms once in the early summer. Peter Beales is very keen on it: ‘When seen at its best, this rose will convince even the most ardent rejectors of non-remontant roses that it should be growing in their garden, for it is one of the most beautiful of shrubs.’

Here is it:

Interestingly, the celebrated graphic designer Pete Saville borrowed a reproduction of Fantin-Latour’s painting for the cover of the electronica band New Order’s album Power, Corruption and Lies (1983). As he later explained, but with what is surely an excess of cynicism: “Flowers suggested the means by which power, corruption and lies infiltrate our lives.”

Here is the album cover: