François Bonvin Landscape Paintings

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 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...