The Lovers

by Émile Friant (1888)

This painting by the French naturalist Émile Friant depicts a young couple caught in a moment of intimate conversation.

Notice how their elbows are just barely touching? Even though we cannot hear what they are saying, their body language tells us that they respect and admire each other. Their love is expressed in and through their rapt attention.

As Oscar Wilde once wrote: “Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.”

One of the key features of naturalism in art is that it depicts almost photorealistic scenes. But what makes this work by the French painter Émile Friant stand out is that he paints it against an almost impressionistic landscape. see how blurry it is? It’s almost as if you’re looking at a photograph taken in “portrait” mode on the iPhone.

Friant’s use of perspective is also unusual. The emphasis of the characters lies on the right, whereas the background veers towards the left. These crossing lines would become a key part of his naturalist compositions, as it rejected the formal rules of “academic” art, and foregrounded the realist figures in a natural setting.

Today Émile Friant’s works are largely forgotten, having been outshined by the more well-known impressionists. However his works -apart from being beautiful and arresting in their own right- also function as an interesting transition between realism and Impressionism.

I’ve included a few more works below, so hopefully you can get a better sense of his style. I personally find them utterly gorgeous.

Notice once again the blurring and the contrasting lines of the composition.

Again, the unusual grouping towards the right, and the blank and blurry spaces to the left, make this group portrait appear almost like an impressionist photograph.

And finally, another striking composition. This time of a group of churchgoers clad in their Sunday best, passing a beggar in the street.

Below, a self portrait of the artist as a young man.

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