Works by Léon Bonnat

Léon Bonnat trained in Madrid and became a Paris portraitist never without a commission, his portraits marked by Velázquez and Ribera; Sargent and Munch were among his students.

Minding his father's bookshop in Madrid, he copied engravings after the Old Masters and trained under Madrazo; Fruela II of Asturias, a standing king in a red cloak with a jewelled border, dates from 1852. Théophile Gautier called him the opposite of Bouguereau for his stark naturalism and unpolished surfaces. In his Christ on the cross of 1874 the body hangs from a plain wooden cross against a dark sky, ribs showing.

Most of his output was portraits, such as the Portrait of Barye with a Wax Model of "Seated Lion", the sitter standing in a black frock coat. He also etched: the lettering on his 1881 portrait of his teacher Léon Cogniet says he painted and engraved it. In his last years he handled paint more freely and in brighter colour, scratching with the brush and using a spatula, as in his Self-portrait of 1918.

Sources: Wikidata, Wikipedia, Walters Art Museum, Museo del Prado, Cleveland Museum of Art, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris.