Study from Nature Made in Montfaucon 1846
(Etude d'après Nature Faite à Montfaucon, 1846)
François Bonvin (French, 1817-1887)
Oil on canvas, original hand carved wood frame.
Signed, dated and inscribed F. Bonvin 1846 a Montfaucon (ll); inscribed indistinctly Etude... F. Bonvin...montfaucon on the stretcher
6 3/8 x 8 5/8 (9 1/2 x 11 1/2 frame) inches 
Provenance:
Ex Collection Auguste Péquégnot
Paul Prouté
André Watteau
Charles Sadler
Galerie Berès, Paris
Exhibited:
Paris, Galerie Beres, Francois Bonvin, Nov. 20, 1998 - Jan. 9, 1999
Literature:
International Herald Tribune, Nov. 28-29, 1998, p. 9, illus.
 
Bonvin's work has been compared with that of the eighteenth-century artist Jean Siméon Chardin, whom Bonvin greatly admired, and from whose work he often borrowed particular motifs. Amongst the artists he personally encouraged were Théodule Ribot and Fantin-Latour. 
 
He was one of a group of artists who challenged the idea that still-life was a mode of artistic expression inferior to the lofty genre of history and religious painting. Bonvin championed the Realist conviction that everyday subject matter was the trues form of artistic expression. 
 
Bonvin was known for keen observation skills and great restraint. In his paintings, you can almost feel the moment between breaths as the subject matter is contemplated and then committed to canvas. This a superb, very personal and very quiet study of the village of Montfaucon on what appears to be an afternoon in the Argonne region in Northeastern France known its deep valleys and dense woodlands. 
 
François is one of the most interesting painters of the 19th century. Bonvin was born in humble circumstances in Paris and had a very difficult childhood. He was the son of a police officer and a seamstress; when he was four years old his mother died of tuberculosis. Young François was left in the care of an old woman who underfed him. Soon his father married another seamstress and brought the child back into the household. Nine additional children were born (one of whom was his half-brother, the painter Leon Bonvin). The family's resources were severely strained, and to make matters worse, his stepmother took to abusing and under-nourishing him.
 
The young Bonvin started drawing at an early age. His potential was recognized by a friend of the family, who paid for him to attend a school for drawing instruction at age eleven. After having been there for two years, financial difficulties forced him to begin working. He found employment with the police force as a clerk, though he continued to draw and spent all his free time at the Parisian museums, in particular, the Louvre and the Académie Suisse. His earliest known works date from the 1830’s. Eventually, he returned to his studies at the Ecole de Dessin – a school primarily geared towards the decorative arts – and in 1843 began attending life-drawing classes at the Académie Suisse.
 
At the Salon of 1849, he was awarded a third-class medal even though Realist works by such friends and colleagues as Henri Fantin-Latour, Alphonse Legros, Theododule Ribot, and James MacNeill Whistler were rejected. As a result, Bonvin invited these artists to exhibit their rejected works at his studio, known as the Atelier Flamand, an offer repeated after the Salon of 1863. In 1849 his wife left him and Bonvin found it difficult to concentrate on his paintings, preferring instead to make numerous drawings.
 
His subjects were still life and the everyday activities of common people painted in a style that is reminiscent of Pieter de Hooch and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. It is the latter who is especially recalled by Bonvin's delicate luminosity.