Although the French
state art school, the École des Beaux-Arts, did not accept women as students
until 1897, many found other avenues for instruction. Victoria Dubourg received
her early training from another woman artist, Fanny Chéron, and sharpened her
skills by copying paintings on view at the Louvre. Her patient, quiet arrangements
of flowers and fruit reflect the influence of seventeenth-century Dutch and
eighteenth-century French masters—and of her husband, Henri Fantin-Latour, whom
she met in the galleries. After their marriage in 1876, Dubourg distinguished
her output from his by continuing to sign pictures with her maiden name visible
at lower right.