{
"data": {
"id": 150016,
"accession_number": "1980.232",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Portrait of Jean L\u00e9glise, Merchant, Mayor of Saint-Martin-de-Seignanx, 1868. L\u00e9on Bonnat (French, 1833\u20131922). 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",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Portrait of Jean L\u00e9glise, Merchant, Mayor of Saint-Martin-de-Seignanx",
"creation_date": "1868",
"creation_date_earliest": 1868,
"creation_date_latest": 1868,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on fabric",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Unframed: 80.1 x 65.3 cm (31 9/16 x 25 11/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"unframed": {
"height": 0.801,
"height_inch": 31,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5625,
"width": 0.653,
"width_inch": 25,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.6875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed upper left: Ln Bonnat. / 1868.\r\n\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 304507,
"title": "The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830 - 1900",
"description": "The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830 - 1900. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 12, 1980-January 18, 1981).",
"opening_date": "1980-11-12T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 304521,
"title": "Year in Review: 1980",
"description": "Year in Review: 1980. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 24-July 19, 1981).",
"opening_date": "1981-06-24T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"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": [
{
"description": "(H\u00f4tel Drouot, sale, March 14, 1973, no. 84, sold to Fran\u00e7ois-G\u00e9rard Seligmann)",
"citations": [],
"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, \u201cune magnifique paire de portraits de BONNAT.\u201d
"
],
"date": "1973",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(Fran\u00e7ois-G\u00e9rard Seligmann, sold to Cyril Humphris)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1973-1976",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "(Cyril Humphris, London, sold to Noah L. Butkin)",
"citations": [],
"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.\u201d At this time, the identities of the sitter and his family remain unknown.
"
],
"date": "1976-1977",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Noah L. Butkin, Cleveland, OH, bequeathed to the Cleveland Museum of Art as a result of disclaimer by Muriel S. Butkin",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1977-1980",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1980-",
"sortorder": 5
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Bonnat was an academic painter as well as a teacher who encouraged freedom of expression and execution. He recommended traveling to Madrid to visit the Prado Museum, introduced Paris to Spanish painting technique, and influenced the evolution of French painting.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Jean L\u00e9glise (1813\u20131876) was the mayor of Saint-Martin-de-Seignanx, a small town near Bayonne in southwestern France. A trader in wood, he made a fortune from the construction of the railroad between Bayonne and Bordeaux. Bonnat painted a companion portrait of L\u00e9glise's wife, Maire-Augusta-Julie L\u00e9glise (1812\u20131894). The latter portrait, also signed and dated 1868, was donated to the Mus\u00e9e Carnavalet in Paris in 2001.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60474422"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1980.232-portrait-of-a-man",
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1980.232-portrait-of-jean-leg"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Ho\u0302tel Drouot. Tableaux modernes. March 14, 1973.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Louise d\u2019Argencourt, letter to Fran\u00e7ois-G\u00e9rard Seligmann, Aug. 3, 1995, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Fran\u00e7ois-G\u00e9rard Seligmann, letter to Louise d\u2019Argencourt, Aug. 9, 1995, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Fran\u00e7ois-G\u00e9rard 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 \u2013 digitized: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/container/viewer/Seligmann-Fran%C3%A7ois-Gerard\u2014289707].",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Fran\u00e7ois-G\u00e9rard Seligmann, letter to Louise d\u2019Argencourt, Aug. 9, 1995, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Sherman Lee, letter to Cyril Humphris, July 21, 1977, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Weisberg, Gabriel P. The European Realist Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cyril Humphris, letter to William Talbot, July 17, 1978, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "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": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1980.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163\u2013219.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 213, no. 86",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159730"
},
{
"citation": "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": ""
},
{
"citation": "Saigne, Guy. Le\u0301on Bonnat: le portraitiste de la IIIe Re\u0301publique: catalogue raisonne\u0301 des portraits. [Paris]: Mare & Martin, 2017.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 461.",
"url": null
}
],
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"creditline": "Bequest of Noah L. Butkin",
"image_credit": null,
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"athena_id": 150016,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1736,
"description": "L\u00e9on Bonnat (French, 1833\u20131922)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "L\u00e9on 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 \u00c9cole 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.\r\nBonnat 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. \r\nDuring 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, H\u00f4tel-de-Ville, and the Palais de Justice, the latter lacking only the formidable Christ on the Cross (1874, Mus\u00e9e du Petit Palais, Paris).\r\nBy 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 Acad\u00e9mie and \u00c9cole 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 Mus\u00e9e 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.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1833",
"death_year": "1922",
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"weight": 1
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],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1980-12-19T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1868,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1868",
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"updated_at": "2026-09-17 11:22:17.865000"
}
}