Charles Léon Bonvin (February 28, 1834 – January 30, 1866) was a French

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting metho ...

artist known for

genre painting Genre painting (or petit genre) is the painting of genre art, which depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity ca ...

, realist

still life A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...

and delicate and melancholic

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

Biography

Bonvin was born in Vaugirard (at the time a municipality on the outskirts of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, today part of the city) in humble circumstances. He was the son of a constable and a seamstress who owned a poor

guinguette The guinguette (), originating in the 17th century, was a type of popular tavern in the suburb, suburbs of Paris and of other cities in France. The term comes from ''guinguet'', a type of cheap green wine served there. A ''goguette'' was a simi ...

. He had numerous siblings and lived in a barren plain; the household money was scarce. As a young boy he began making small

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ca ...

sketches, and gradually ink drawings. His older step brother

François Bonvin François Bonvin (November 22, 1817 – December 19, 1887) was a French realist painter. Early life Bonvin was born in humble circumstances in Paris, the son of a police officer and a seamstress. When he was four years old his mother died o ...

encouraged him to continue and provided him with paints and the advice to carefully study the old masters of the

Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands which roughly lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established, to 1672, when the '' Rampjaar'' occurred. During this period, Dutch trade, scientific development ...

. He probably attended some of the free classes offered by l'

École royale gratuite de dessin École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...

created by

Bachelier Louis Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Bachelier (; 11 March 1870 – 28 April 1946) was a French mathematician at the turn of the 20th century. He is credited with being the first person to model the stochastic process now called Brownian motion, as part ...

but was mostly self-taught. He also learned to play music on a

harmonium The pump organ or reed organ is a type of organ that uses free reeds to generate sound, with air passing over vibrating thin metal strips mounted in a frame. Types include the pressure-based harmonium, the suction reed organ (which employs a va ...

. In 1861 Bonvin married, soon had children, and worked as an innkeeper. The young couple struggled; the inn lost money; anguish set in. Yet painting in the stillness of early morning, at dusk or at night, Bonvin was able to create numerous genre paintings echoing the manner of

Jean Siméon Chardin Jean Siméon Chardin (; November 2, 1699 – December 6, 1779) was an 18th-century France, French List of painters, painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre works, genre paintings which depict kitch ...

, meticulous still life studied with the precision of a botanist and subtle landscapes capturing fleeting atmospheric effects and solitude. These were mostly fragile watercolors for affordability reasons, oil paints being more expensive. He approached gallerists on

rue Laffitte The Rue Laffitte is a street in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, located near the Metro stations Richelieu - Drouot and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. History This street was created in 1771 between the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue de Provence. ...

and

rue du Bac The Rue du Bac () is a street in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. The street, which is 1,150 m long, begins at the junction of the quais Quai Voltaire, Voltaire and Quai Anatole-France, Anatole-France and ends at the Rue de Sèvres. Rue du Bac ...

, but he made few sales of his watercolors. In January 1866, Bonvin traveled to Paris again to offer his watercolors to a dealer, who rejected them as too dark. Desperate, he hung himself the next day in the forest, on January 30, 1866, and was discovered a few days later; he was 31 years of age. File:Léon Bonvin - Cook with Red Apron - Walters 371505.jpg, Léon Bonvin - ''Cook with Red Apron'' File:Léon Bonvin - Still Life - Basket of Grapes, Walnuts, and Knife - Walters 371529 (2).jpg, Léon Bonvin - ''Basket of Grapes, Walnuts, and Knife'' File:Léon Bonvin - The Country Inn - Walters 371671 (2).jpg, Léon Bonvin - ''The Country Inn'' File:Bouquet of Small Chrysanthemums MET DP805445.jpg, Léon Bonvin - '' Bouquet of Small Chrysanthemums'' - Metropolitan Museum of Art 1996.296

Posterity

At the initiative of his step brother François, because of the dire circumstances in which his family was left, a special art sale of his works was organized to raise money, with artists donating their own works as well; these included

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, ; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his ...

Henri Fantin-Latour Henri Fantin-Latour (; 14 January 1836 – 25 August 1904) was a French painter and lithographer best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of Parisian artists and writers. Early life Born in Grenoble, Isère, Ignace Henri Jean Th� ...

, and

Johan Barthold Jongkind Johan Barthold Jongkind (; 3 June 1819 – 9 February 1891) was a Dutch painter and printmaker. He painted marine landscapes in a free manner and is regarded as a forerunner of impressionism. Biography Jongkind was born in the town of Lat ...

, among many others "who must have been aware of the quality of Léon's art or knew his brother François Bonvin". The special sale took place at the

Hôtel Drouot Hôtel Drouot is a large auction venue in Paris, known for fine art, antiques, and antiquities. It consists of 16 halls hosting 70 independent auction firms, which operate under the umbrella grouping of Drouot. The firm's main location, called D ...

in Paris on May 24, 1866. Art historian Gabriel P. Weisberg, in ''Léon Bonvin's Realism revisited'', wrote:

''"What has been advanced here is that others recognized the significance of both artists at the time, although it was François who generated more discussion since he lived longer, completed oil paintings, and was a regular exhibitor at the Paris Salon. ''Léon Bonvin's watercolors capture a sense of the ineffable with a delicacy that belies the destitute circumstances of his daily life. Seeing just a few of his watercolors is spellbinding and haunting."''

Among the collectors interested in Bonvin’s work, William T. Walters, father of

Henry Walters Henry Walters (September 26, 1848 – November 30, 1931) was noted as an art collector and philanthropist, a founder of the Walters Art Gallery (now the Walters Art Museum) in Baltimore, Maryland, which he donated to the city in his 1931 will f ...

, founder of the

Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum is a public art museum located in the Mount Vernon, Baltimore, Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Founded and opened in 1934, it holds collections from the mid-19th century that were amassed substantially ...

, who acquired some of Bonvin’s fragile works. His collection eventually comprised 56 watercolors and one, rare

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

. Today, it is the largest collection of Bonvin's work in existence.

Collections

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthies ...

Morgan Library & Museum The Morgan Library & Museum (originally known as the Pierpont Morgan Library and colloquially known the Morgan) is a museum and research library in New York City, New York, U.S. Completed in 1906 as the private library of the banker J. P. Morg ...

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents. Follo ...

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

Musée du Luxembourg The () is a museum at 19 in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Established in 1750, it was initially an art museum located in the east wing of the Luxembourg Palace (the matching west wing housed the Marie de' Medici cycle by Peter Paul Rubens) an ...

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

Bibliography

* Gabriel P. Weisberg, William R. Johnston : ''The Drawings and Water Colors of Leon Bonvin'',

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Located in the Wade Park District of University Circle, the museum is internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian art, Asian and Art of anc ...

, 02/01/1981,

References

External links

Leon Bonvin on Artnet

Press release, The Cleveland Museum of Art, November 12, 1980, on Archive.org

Resources from the Frick Art Reference Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonvin, Léon 1834 births 1866 deaths Suicides by hanging in France 19th-century French painters French still life painters French landscape painters French genre painters French watercolourists Sibling artists Innkeepers