Page 85 - Orient Collection

36. Fellah Women on the edge of The NILE

Artist: Léon BONNAT, French, (1833 - 1922)
Execution date (approximate): 1920
Téchnique: Oil on Canvas, (signed lower left)
Measures: 100.5 x 61 cm.
Description: Couple Fellah women (village women) washing their cloth in the Nile river,
other taking water, and other going to wash a child. In this painting Bonnat expresses his
great skills in the mixed composition of Architecture, Light, and Shade.

Certificate (copy) signed by Bonnat dated 8, Diciembre 1920, “Femme Fellah au lavoir
(Caire)”.

Biography
Léon-Joseph Bonnat was a French painter who was born in Bayonne and lived in Madrid due
to his family business. In 1948 he was admitted at the School of Fine Arts at the Academy of
San Fernando in Madrid, where he joined the atelier of José and Frederico de Madrazo. At the
beginning he got inspirations from the paintings of Caravaggio, José de Ribera, Goya, and
Velasquez who was his Maestro by excellence. Initially, his juvenile style caused some scandal
by moving away from the conventional styles to a more naturalist and plausible one. His way
of treat in Biblical themes caused rejection, as I represented the sacred characters in it as
people from the streets, with a rustic and even unpleasant appearance.
However, he then met Manet in Madrid and other artists, and started to paint portraits of the
aristocracy. His portraits were very successful and even became popular in United States.
After the death of his father he returned with his family to Paris in 1853. He joined the atelier
of Léon Cogniet in 1854, and then went to Rome in 1857 until 1860. His return to Paris was
a great success , and after a trip to Egypt and the holy land in Palestine with Gérome, he
initiated in the Orientalist paintings. He was a famous portraitist , and in front of him posed
many politicians and famous writers such as Victor Hugo, Renan, Dumas, and even painters
like Cogniet or Puvis de Chavannes.
In 1867 he opened his own atelier where many students, like Toulouse-Lautrec, James Ensor,
Georges Braque, Edvard Munch, Matisse, Duffy, Sorolla, Zuloaga and William Anderson Coffin
joined him. He received the Medal of Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1867.He became
president of the Jury of the salon de Paris in 1892, and then Honorary President of the society
of the French Artists in 1894 and gained the Grande Croix in 1900. In 1905 he was appointed
President of the Conseil supérieur des Musées (President of the advisory board of The Musées
Nationaux). He traveled back to Madrid a lot and became a Correspondent Member of the
Academy of San Fernando. In 1919 He accompanied the King of Spain during his visit to
the French Academy and received the award of the Big Cross of Alfonso XII. He made an
important fortune which allowed him to buy old Masters ( Alonso Cano, Ribera, Goya, El Greco
and Murillo, drawings of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphaël, Rembrandt, and Frans
Halls), and later he offered them to the city of Bayonne, where a Museum bears his name, the
Musée Bonnat. His paintings can be seen in the Prado and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

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