Léon Bonnat

• Name — Léon Bonnat • Birth Name — Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat • Born — 20 June 1833 • Birthplace — Bayonne, France • Died — 8 September 1922 • Place of death — Monchy-Saint-Éloi, France • Known for — Painter

Bonnat was born in Bayonne, but from 1846 to 1853 he lived in Madrid, where his father owned a bookshop. While tending his father's shop, he copied engravings of works by the Old Masters, developing a passion for drawing. In Madrid, he received his artistic training under Madrazo. He later worked in Paris, where he became known as a leading portraitist, never without a commission. His many portraits show the influence of Velázquez, Jusepe de Ribera and other Spanish masters, as well as Titian and Van Dyke, whose works he studied in the Prado, which placed him at the forefront of painting in France in the 1850s, opposing neoclassicism and academicism. Following the period in Spain, Bonnat worked in the studios of the history painters Paul Delaroche and Leon Cogniet (1854) in Paris. Despite repeated attempts, he failed to win the prix de Rome, finally receiving only a second prize. However, a scholarship from his native Bayonne and support from the Personnaz family allowed him to spend three years in Rome (1858–60) independently, where he and Antonin Personnaz became lifetime friends. During his stay in Rome, he also became friends with Edgar Degas, Gustave Moreau, Jean-Jacques Henner, and the sculptor Henri Chapu.

Bonnat won a medal of honour in Paris in 1869, going on to become one of the leading artists of his day. Bonnat went on to win the Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur and became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1882. Bonnat was quite popular with American students in Paris. In addition to his native French, he spoke Spanish and Italian and knew English well, to the relief of many monolingual Americans. In May 1905, he succeeded Paul Dubois as director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Julius Kaplan characterised Bonnat as "a liberal teacher who stressed simplicity in art above high academic finish, as well as overall effect rather than detail." Bonnat's emphasis on overall effect on the one hand, and rigorous drawing on the other, put him in a middle position with respect to the Impressionists and academic painters like his friend Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1917, Bonnat was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Corresponding member.

As a teacher, he encouraged freedom of expression and execution. He recommended traveling to Madrid to visit the Prado Museum, and introduced in Paris the tendency to paint in the Spanish way, which influenced the evolution of French painting. Some of Bonnat's more notable students include: Henri Adrien Tanoux, John Singer Sargent, Stanhope Forbes, Gustave Caillebotte, Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke, Gustaf Cederström, Laurits Tuxen, P. S. Krøyer, Suzor-Coté, Robert Harris, Alfred Philippe Roll, Georges Braque, Thomas Eakins, Raoul Dufy, Jean Béraud, Franklin Brownell, Marius Vasselon, Hubert-Denis Etcheverry, Fred Barnard, Louis Béroud, Paul de la Boulaye, Aloysius O'Kelly, Erik Werenskiold, Graciano Mendilaharzu, Edvard Munch, Alphonse Osbert, Henry Siddons Mowbray, Francis Petrus Paulus, Charles Sprague Pearce, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Manuel Cusí y Ferret, Hyakutake Kaneyuki, Nils Forsberg, Walter Tyndale, Émile-Louis Foubert, Emmanuel Pierre Damoye, and Harry Watrous.

• Illustration — Bonnat painting a portrait of Alfred Roll, 1918 In his last years, his painting evolved, from the influence of seventeenth-century painters and Goya, towards a more modern freedom of execution, scratching the brush and using the spatula, as well as a more colorful color gamut, as can be seen in his Self-portrait at the Prado Museum. In a gesture of gratitude for the help he had been provided in his youth and with the assistance of Antonin Personnaz, Bonnat built a museum in his native city of Bayonne, the Musée Bonnat. Most of the works in the museum are from the personal collections of Bonnat and Personnaz, amassed over a lifetime of travelling around Europe. It includes an exceptionally fine collection of Old Master drawings from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to Ingres and Géricault. Bonnat died on 8 September 1922 at Monchy-Saint-Éloi, and was buried at the Cimitiére Saint-Etienne, Bayonne.

Bonnat never married and lived for much of his life with his mother and sister in the Place Vintimille (renamed Place Adolphe-Max in 1940).

• Illustration — Giotto gardant les chèvres (1850) Musée Bonnat • Illustration — An Egyptian Peasant Woman and Her Child (1869–1870) Metropolitan Museum of Art • Illustration — An Arab Sheik (c. 1870) Walters Art Museum • Illustration — Fille romaine à la fontaine (1875) Metropolitan Museum of Art • Illustration — Adolphe Thiers (1876) • Illustration — Portrait of Victor Hugo (1879) • Illustration — Job (1880) • Illustration — Christ on the Cross (1880) • Illustration — William Thompson Walters (1883) Walters Art Museum • Illustration — Portrait of Antoine-Louis Barye with a Wax Model of Seated Lion (1868) Walters Art Museum • Illustration — Self-portrait dedicated to William Walters (1885) Walters Art Museum • Illustration — Rose Caron in the role of Salammbo • Illustration — A circa 1865 portrait of sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye

Léon Bonnat was recorded at birth as Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat. His recorded language was French.