Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat (20 June 1833 – 8 September 1922) was a French painter, Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur and professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
Bonnat was born in Bayonne, but from 1846 to 1853 he lived in Madrid, where his father owned a bookshop.[1] 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 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 allowed him to spend three years in Rome (1858–60) independently. During his stay in Rome, he 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.
Bonnat's vivid portraits of contemporary celebrities are his most characteristic works, but his most important works are arguably his powerful religious paintings, such as his Christ on the Cross and Job (in the Musée Bonnat) and the large Martyrdom of St Denis for the Pantheon in Paris. However, he received few commissions for religious and historical paintings, and most of his output consists of portraits. He also produced genre paintings of Italian peasants, and a small number of Orientalist scenes.
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 paint in the Spanish way, which influenced the evolution of French painting. Some of Bonnat's more notable students include: John Singer Sargent, Stanhope Forbes, Gustave Caillebotte, Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke, Gustaf Cederström, Laurits Tuxen, P. S. Krøyer, Suzor-Coté, 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, Edvard Munch, Alphonse Osbert, Henry Siddons Mowbray, Charles Sprague Pearce, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Hyakutake Kaneyuki, Nils Forsberg, Walter Tyndale, Émile-Louis Foubert, and Harry Watrous.
