Léon bonnat

Léon Bonnat (born June 20, , Bayonne, France—died September 8, , Monchy-St-Éloi) was a notable French portrait painter and teacher of several well-known artists.

He discovered painting and received his first artistic lessons in Spain, where his family settled between and Candidate for the Prix de Rome competition, where he only obtained, after two failures in and , a second second grand prize in , he left, thanks once again to the support of the City of Bayonne, for Rome, where he stayed from to , enjoying a status close to the laureates of the Prix de Rome.

He exhibited at the Salon from , and was noticed for the first time by the critics at the Salon of Success was rapid: The Good Samaritain received an honorable mention from the Salon jury in and was purchased by the State, Mariuccia, presented at the Salon of , was bought by Princess Mathilde… He received his first public order in a decorative panel on the life of Saint Vincent de Paul for the Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs church in Paris, delivered in He painted, after his return and for a few years, orientalist genre scenes, while continuing to produce important religious works.

Christ on the Cross, which responded to a state commission for the decoration of the Cour d'Assises of the Palais de Justice in Paris, was presented at the Salon of and caused a certain scandal. The artist. I was very young, in Madrid; my father, on bright days such as one only sees in Spain, sometimes took me to the Prado Museum, where we did long stops in Spanish cinemas.

In addition to this, you will need to know more about it. He represents life in all its intensity. We see his characters, we talk with them, he resuscitates and revives an entire era. He does not belong to any school.

Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat (20 June – 8 September ) was a French painter, Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur, art collector and professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

He has opened the new path which closed behind him. Success, and fortune, were brought to him by portrait painting: he presented at the Salon the portraits of Mme Pasca in , of Thiers in , of Victor Hugo in , the first large portraits of a long series, which he consecrate as one of the great portrait painters of his time, the greatest for some critics.

He very quickly and almost definitively abandoned religious painting, a genre in which his last great work was Le Martyre de Saint Denis for the Pantheon, commissioned in and delivered in , and genre painting, to devote himself exclusively to portraiture. The number of portraits made is estimated at around five hundred. Recognized by critics and the public, he is also recognized by his peers who regularly make him a member of the Jury of the Salon, the President in , then Honorary President in of the Society of French Artists, and more generally their representative in administrative bodies.