Paul De Laboulaye (1849-1926) - Portrait Of Léon Bonnat With A Pipe - Oil On Canvas - Circa 1870

Paul de LABOULAYE (1849-1926) Portrait of Léon Bonnat with a pipe Oil on Canvas signed and dated "1870" upper left Size of the HST: 81.5 x 64.5 cm Size of the frame: 97 x 80 cm ( original frame, re-lined) source: Wikipedia Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat, born June 20, 1833 in Bayonne and died September 8, 1922 in Monchy-Saint-Éloi, was a French painter, engraver and art collector. Originally from Bayonne, Léon Bonnat lived between 1846 and 1853 in Madrid, where his father Joseph Bonnat was a bookseller and where he studied painting with José de Madrazo y Agudo and Federico de Madrazo. He arrived in Paris in 1854, and became a pupil of Léon Cogniet at the École des Beaux-Arts. His Resurrection of Lazarus won him a second prize at the Prix de Rome in 1857. The study of Spanish masters at the Prado Museum made his painting at the forefront of French painting in the 1850s, opposing the neo -classicism and using a palette of earthy tones and neutral backgrounds, as well as a loose and determined brushstroke. He made a long stay, a trip to Italy in the early 1860s, where he was part of the Caldarrosti group with Henner and Degas2. He visited the Orient and traveled to Greece and the Middle East in the late 1870s.