This curious drawing in ink on tracing paper records the composition of one of Fantin-Latour's ambitious group portraits, an 1872 canvas devoted to the poets who formed the Parnassus group. The painting Un Coin de table is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, depicts from left to right, seated: Paul Verlaine, Alfred Rimbaud, Léon Valade, Ernest d'Hervilly and Camille Pelletan, and standing behind them, Elzéar Bonnier, Emile Blémont and Jean Aicard. The picture had a complex genesis, and two small drawings in the Louvre and a letter sketch are among Fantin-Latour's preparatory material for the canvas.
The author of this sketch recording the composition added numbers and a key to identify the group gathered around the table, a handy reference when the work was shown in the annual Salon exhibition in 1872. Although on tracing paper, the drawing may have been done freehand rather than replicating a printed image of the painting.
Inscribed in pen and brown ink at upper left, "Coin de table / Salon de 1872"; at upper right, "1 P. Verlaine / 2 A. Raimbaud [sic] / 3 L. Valade / 4 E. d'Hervilly / 5 Camille Pelletan / 6 E. Bonnier / 7 E. Blémont / 8 Jean Aicard"; key numbers 1 to 8 within the design.
Watermark: none.
Rothschild, Alexandrine de, former owner.
Heineman, Hettie, 1890-1974, former owner.
Heineman, James H., former owner.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Nineteenth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1978-1980. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981, p. 189.