Fairy of the Alps

c. 1885

Fairy of the Alps, c. 1885. Henri Fantin-Latour (French, 1836–1904). Charcoal with white chalk and black chalk, with framing lines in black crayon and squaring marks in graphite, on laid paper discolored to tan; sheet: 62.5 x 46.7 cm (24 5/8 x 18 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Whitehill Art Purchase Endowment Fund 2019.225 Henri Fantin-Latour’s drawings featured imaginative compositions, often inspired by the music of contemporary German composers. This sheet relates to the symphonic work Manfred by Robert Schumann (1848), a drama in which Manfred encounters apparitions while mourning his lost lover. Fantin used layers of dark charcoal to evoke the emotional tenor of his subject and to translate the experience of listening to Schumann’s music using a visual medium. This drawing relates to a print of the same year. Fantin used this sheet to work out his composition before completing a drawing on tracing paper, which was then used to transfer the image to a lithographic stone.