Orpheus playing his lyre (Poet and Nymphs)

Bequeathed to Joyce Valentine by her aunt Lilian Jackson the former companion of Lawrence Wright (1888-1964), composer and publisher of popular songs (London and Blackpool). One of Fantin-Latour's circle of friends was Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) the German-born French musician and composer whose most successful full-length operetta was 'Orpheus in the Underworld' composed in 1858 & staged with Gustave Dore scenery & spectacularly revived in the mid-1870s. Henri Fantin-Latour was a French painter and lithographer best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of Parisian artists and writers.