The summer Fantin-Latour made Roses and Lilies he claimed to be "very tired" of painting flowers. The admission is not surprising for an artist who had spent the previous thirty years producing still lifes expressly for an English market, but it is difficult to reconcile with the present work, originally owned by Fantin-Latour's patron and dealer, Ruth Edwards. One would be hard-pressed to find signs of fatigue or slackening of artistic sensibility in this splendid arrangement, deftly painted with sprightly flourishes of color, ranging from unexpected highlights of blue to creamy whites faintly dusted with mauve and yellow. Fantin-Latour's signature roses, in full bloom in a rounded bowl, serve as a perfect counterpoint to the long, graceful stems of white lilies in a tall glass vase. Here, with unerring sensitivity, he perceived the nature of flowers "not with the enlarging lens" of the botanist—to quote James McNeill Whistler—"but the light of one who sees in the choice selection of brilliant tones and delicate tints future harmonies." At age fifty-two Fantin-Latour admirably met the challenge prescribed by the American artist three years earlier in his famous "Ten O'Clock" lecture.