Bacchus 1903

Henri Fantin-Latour made this print, "Bacchus", in late 19th century France. The image depicts a scene of revelry, recalling ancient bacchanals and pagan rituals. Fantin-Latour was working at a time of great social change, but French society was also deeply conservative. The establishment frowned upon anything seen as subversive to social order. The artist here appears to be channeling earlier Romantic artists, who evoked the primal forces of nature as a critique of bourgeois society. He looked back to the mythic past as a means of expressing a yearning for a more authentic and ecstatic experience, beyond the confines of modern life. The artist's institutional position is also critical: he was attempting to make a name for himself, exhibiting at the Salon and other venues. To better understand this piece, we can examine exhibition reviews and other period sources to see how such work was received at the time. The meaning of art, as we can see, is heavily reliant on its cultural and institutional context.