Roman Girl at a Fountain #2

by Leon Bonnat

Title

Roman Girl at a Fountain #2

Artist

Leon Bonnat

Medium

Painting - Painting

Description

Roman Girl at a Fountain
1875
Léon Bonnat French


This picture is one of the last genre scenes that Bonnat produced before he turned exclusively to portraiture. He probably agreed to paint the work for collector Catharine Lorillard Wolfe about 1873. Two years later the painting was delivered to Wolfe’s Madison Avenue brownstone, where it hung in the library, along with her three-quarter-length portrait by Cabanel (87.15.82). In October 1885, soon before she died, Wolfe moved Roman Girl at a Fountain, said to be one of her favorite works, to a specially constructed niche in her dining room.


Léon Bonnat, in full Léon-Joseph-Florentin Bonnat, (born June 20, 1833, Bayonne, France—died September 8, 1922, Monchy-St-Éloi), notable French portrait painter and teacher of several well-known artists.

Bonnat studied under Federico Madrazo in Madrid and, sponsored by the city of Bayonne, under Léon Cogniet in Paris. His earlier works are religious paintings in which his study of Spanish Baroque art is evident. His later and better-known portrait series of prominent Europeans and Americans was begun in 1875. In these he drew inspiration from Diego Velázquez and the Spanish realists. His subjects included Adolphe Thiers, Victor Hugo, Hippolyte Taine, Louis Pasteur, J.-A.-D. Ingres, and other contemporaries. He painted about 200 portraits, most of them featuring photographically accurate draftsmanship and subdued colouring.

In 1888 Bonnat became professor of painting at the École des Beaux-Arts, and he became its director in 1905. He was an influential teacher—his students included Thomas Eakins, Gustave Caillebotte, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec—and he ran a busy studio for more than three decades. His excellent and wide-ranging art collection is part of the Bonnat Museum in Bayonne.

Uploaded

February 15th, 2020

Statistics

Viewed 1,734 Times  -  Last Visitor from Fairfield, CT on 04/26/2024 at 12:20 AM

Colors

Embed

Share

Sales Sheet

Tags