id: 150016 accession number: 1980.232 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.232 updated: 2025-01-13 13:05:17.964000 Portrait of Jean Léglise, Merchant, Mayor of Saint-Martin-de-Seignanx, 1868. Léon Bonnat (French, 1833–1922). Oil on fabric; unframed: 80.1 x 65.3 cm (31 9/16 x 25 11/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Noah L. Butkin 1980.232 title: Portrait of Jean Léglise, Merchant, Mayor of Saint-Martin-de-Seignanx title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1868 creation date earliest: 1868 creation date latest: 1868 current location: creditline: Bequest of Noah L. Butkin copyright: --- culture: France, 19th century technique: oil on fabric department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960 type: Painting find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Léon Bonnat (French, 1833–1922) - artist Léon Bonnat began his formal artistic training at the royal academy of art in Madrid, where his family moved around 1846. His primary master was the leading artist in the Spanish capital, Federico de Madrazo, and Bonnat was one of the few foreign artists of the nineteenth century to study Spanish art, largely through the Prado Museum, as part of an official curriculum. After the death of his father in 1853, Bonnat and his family moved to Paris, where he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1854 and the independent atelier run by Cogniet (q.v.). During these years, Bonnat received annual scholarships from the municipal council of his hometown of Bayonne, and when he won only a second prize in the Prix de Rome of 1857, Bayonne again provided the funding for him to go to Rome to complete his artistic education from 1858 to 1861. Bonnat had already begun exhibiting at the Salons in 1857 and continued, with increasing success, during the 1860s. His painting style in this period gener-ally featured powerful, naturalistic forms, often illuminated in dramatic chiaroscuro and modeled in fairly broad, thick paints of a rather limited palette. Critics of the time frequently compared his mode to that of the Spanish Old Masters, especially Ribera, but given his background and the French interest in things Spanish at this time, they were predisposed to see these visual correspondences. Bonnat appealed to more aesthetically conservative critics because of both his evident skills in modeling, anatomy, and composition and his willingness to undertake history and religious painting. Yet he also found support among more liberal art writers who perceived an originality, strength, and virility in his subjects, naturalism, and palette. Both sides hoped that this promising talent would lead French art out of its perceived decline. During the 1860s the French govern-ment, the cities of Paris and Bayonne, the French emperor and empress, art dealers, and private individuals all purchased or commissioned works of art from Bonnat in a variety of genres: history, religious, mythological, allegorical, portrait, and genre painting. Large easel and mural paintings by Bonnat still exist in situ in Paris in the church of St. Nicolas-des-Champs, the Pantheon, Hôtel-de-Ville, and the Palais de Justice, the latter lacking only the formidable Christ on the Cross (1874, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris). By 1867 Bonnat was named to the Legion of Honor, and in 1869 he won the gold medal, the highest award, at the Salon. With the 1870s he became internationally esteemed as a portraitist and could demand extremely high prices for these works. He modified his mode into a more exaggerated, harsher realism with even stronger light-dark contrasts. His financial success enabled him to indulge his great passion for collecting art, and by the 1890s he had acquired objects of great value, particularly drawings. The Académie and École des Beaux-Arts only brought him within their ranks in the 1880s, even though he had run a well-attended atelier since the late 1860s. With these duties came additional administrative positions that left him less and less time for his own painting. In 1890 Bonnat initiated a project to build a museum in Bayonne and bequeath his art collections to it, a plan that was finally realized with the opening of the Musée Bonnat in 1902. By the end of his long life, his reputation as a collector and administrator had eclipsed the esteem his painting had once enjoyed. --- measurements: Unframed: 80.1 x 65.3 cm (31 9/16 x 25 11/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Signed upper left: Ln Bonnat. / 1868. translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830 - 1900 opening date: 1980-11-12T05:00:00 The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830 - 1900. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 12, 1980-January 18, 1981). title: Year in Review: 1980 opening date: 1981-06-24T04:00:00 Year in Review: 1980. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 24-July 19, 1981). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * {'description': 'The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830-1900. Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO; Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland (1980-82).', 'opening_date': '1900-01-01T00:00:00'} --- PROVENANCE (Hôtel Drouot, sale, March 14, 1973, no. 84, sold to François-Gérard Seligmann) date: 1973 footnotes: *
The painting was sold to Seligmann along with its pendant, Portrait de femme (no. 83), which has the same dimensions and date of execution as the Cleveland portrait.  Several days after the auction, Seligmann wrote to his half-brother Germain that he had purchased, “une magnifique paire de portraits de BONNAT.”
citations: (François-Gérard Seligmann, sold to Cyril Humphris) date: 1973-1976 footnotes: citations: (Cyril Humphris, London, sold to Noah L. Butkin) date: 1976-1977 footnotes: *
In a letter to CMA curator William Talbot, Humphris said that he acquired the painting from an agent - presumably Seligmann - in France who "was directly in touch with the descendents of the sitter."  Humphris continued,  "He [Seligmann] has so far refused to give me the name of the family, as I understand he is hoping to acquire other things from the same source and is not yet prepared to give me more details.”  At this time, the identities of the sitter and his family remain unknown.

citations: Noah L. Butkin, Cleveland, OH, bequeathed to the Cleveland Museum of Art as a result of disclaimer by Muriel S. Butkin date: 1977-1980 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio date: 1980- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Hôtel Drouot. Tableaux modernes. March 14, 1973. page number: url: Louise d’Argencourt, letter to François-Gérard Seligmann, Aug. 3, 1995, in CMA curatorial file. page number: url: François-Gérard Seligmann, letter to Louise d’Argencourt, Aug. 9, 1995, in CMA curatorial file. page number: url: François-Gérard Seligmann, letter to Germain Seligmann, March 19, 1973. Jacques Seligmann & Co. records, 1904-1978, bulk 1913-1974, Series 1.3: General Correspondence, 1913-1987. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Box 88, folder 3 – digitized: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/container/viewer/Seligmann-Fran%C3%A7ois-Gerard—289707]. page number: url: François-Gérard Seligmann, letter to Louise d’Argencourt, Aug. 9, 1995, in CMA curatorial file. page number: url: Sherman Lee, letter to Cyril Humphris, July 21, 1977, in CMA curatorial file. page number: url: Weisberg, Gabriel P. The European Realist Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. page number: url: Cyril Humphris, letter to William Talbot, July 17, 1978, in CMA curatorial file. page number: url: Estate of Noah L. Butkin, Bequests to Cleveland Museum of Art as a result of disclaimer by Murel S. Butkin. Estates, Gifts, and Funds, Series 1, Box 2:14. Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. page number: url: Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: P. 53-56, Vol. I, no. 20 url: Saigne, Guy. Léon Bonnat: le portraitiste de la IIIe République: catalogue raisonné des portraits. [Paris]: Mare & Martin, 2017. page number: Reproduced: P. 461. url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1980.232/1980.232_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1980.232/1980.232_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1980.232/1980.232_full.tif