Léon Bonnat
1833-1922
Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat was a notable French Academic portrait painter and teacher of several well-known artists. He was born in Bayonne, and educated under Madrazo in Madrid, Spain. He lived in Madrid from 1846 to 1853, where his father owned a bookshop.
He was 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. He later worked in Paris, where he became known as a leading portraitist. His long series of portraits shows the influence of 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 coloring.
He won a medal of honor at Paris in 1869, where he became one of the leading artists of his day. His later and better-known portrait series of prominent Europeans and Americans was begun in 1875.
Bonnat went on to become a professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1888. In May 1905 he succeeded Paul Dubois as director. He was an influential teacher. His students included Thomas Eakins, Gustave Caillebotte, Suzor-Coté, Georges Braque, Aloysius O'Kelly, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He ran a busy studio for more than three decades.
His vivid portrait-painting is his most characteristic work, but his subject pictures, such as the Martyrdom of St Denis in the Pantheon, are also famous. His excellent and wide-ranging art collection is part of the Bonnat Museum in Bayonne.
Léon Bonnat died September 8, 1922, Monchy-St-Éloi.
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