{
"data": {
"id": 168335,
"accession_number": "2010.166",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Woman at the Spinet, 1860. Fran\u00e7ois Bonvin (French, 1817\u20131887). Fabricated black chalk with touches of brown and red chalk and stumping ; sheet: 42 x 30.5 cm (16 9/16 x 12 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Muriel Butkin, 2010.166",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Woman at the Spinet",
"creation_date": "1860",
"creation_date_earliest": 1860,
"creation_date_latest": 1860,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "fabricated black chalk with touches of brown and red chalk and stumping ",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "tan laid paper",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - French",
"type": "Drawing",
"measurements": "Sheet: 42 x 30.5 cm (16 9/16 x 12 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.42,
"height_inch": 16,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5625,
"width": 0.305,
"width_inch": 12,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed and dated, lower left, black chalk: F. Bonvin 1860",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 229926,
"title": "Breaking the Mold: The Legacy of the Noah L. and Muriel S. Butkin Collection of Nineteenth-Century French Art",
"description": "Breaking the Mold: The Legacy of the Noah L. and Muriel S. Butkin Collection of Nineteenth-Century French Art. Snite Museum, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN (organizer) (September 2-December 2, 2012).",
"opening_date": "2012-09-26T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 203744,
"title": "Themes and Variations: Musical Drawings and Prints",
"description": "Themes and Variations: Musical Drawings and Prints. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 25-May 17, 2015).",
"opening_date": "2015-01-25T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "London: P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd (Feb. 20-March 27, 1975): \"French Drawings, Post Neo-Classicism\" cat. # 25, illustrated.",
"opening_date": "1975-02-20T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "P&D Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., London, \"French Drawings: Post Neo-Classicism,\" Spring Exhibition 1975 (lot #25, repr.); Williams & Son, London, December 11, 1975.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"description": "The subject of the woman at the piano was a recurrent theme in Bonvin\u2019s oeuvre. The pianist depicted here was likely C\u00e9line Prunaire, a 21-year-old musician who married the much older artist in 1860. Although the meticulously rendered composition celebrates the grace and propriety of the young woman, the happiness of the couple\u2019s union was fleeting. Prunaire left the artist after fewer than three years, never to return. The pink carnation at her feet suggests a note of foreboding to the image, perhaps intended to allude to the ephemeral nature of music and sentimental bonds.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80074067"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2010.166-woman-at-the-spinet"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Snite Museum of Art, and Gabriel P. Weisberg. Breaking the Mold: The Legacy of the Noah L. and Muriel S. Butkin Collection of Nineteenth-Century French Art. 2012.",
"page_number": "ex. cat. no. 13, p. 56-58",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2010.166",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2010.166/2010.166_web.jpg",
"width": "655",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "466564",
"filename": "2010.166_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2010.166/2010.166_print.jpg",
"width": "2495",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "6213279",
"filename": "2010.166_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2010.166/2010.166_full.tif",
"width": "2711",
"height": "3694",
"filesize": "30083008",
"filename": "2010.166_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Bequest of Muriel Butkin",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 168335,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1562,
"description": "Fran\u00e7ois Bonvin (French, 1817\u20131887)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Born into a poor family, Fran\u00e7ois Bonvin was chiefly a self-taught artist. His childhood was an unhappy one, marked by the death of his mother when he was four, his father's remarriage, and the growing family's constant moving and change of fortune. From 1828 through 1830 he was lucky enough to be sent to the \u00c9cole de Dessin in Paris, but his artistic education was short-lived and he began working as a typesetter in 1832. He became a father one month after his marriage in 1837 and, in order to achieve financial security, applied for a clerk's job at the Paris Police Department-where he remained until 1850-while still working as a printer. Painting was still part of his life as attested by one of his first known oils, a still life from 1839. His health declined, and during a hospital-ization in 1842, Bonvin took up drawing again. He eventually returned to study at the \u00c9cole de Dessin and also at the Manufacture des Gobelins and in 1843 attended classes at the Acad\u00e9mie Suisse where he could sketch from nude models. Around this time Bonvin was also introduced to Granet (q.v.), whom he would consider his true mentor, although never officially studying with him. Bonvin began painting scenes from everyday life, reflecting the simplicity and often the drudgery of the lower classes. He was encouraged in his choice of subject matter by Granet, who suggested he study the Dutch masters. Bonvin exhibited at the Salon from 1847 to 1880, receiving a second-class medal in 1850. The artist became involved in the realist movement, meeting regularly at the Brasserie Andler with, among others, his friends Jules Champfleury, a novelist and art critic, and Courbet (q.v.). During the Second Empire (1852-70) Bonvin earned a reputation with his still lifes and genre paintings that often paid tribute to the Dutch Old Masters. He traveled several times to the Netherlands in order to study such works. Bonvin also encour-aged younger painters, such as J. A. M. Whistler (1834-1903) and Fantin-Latour (q.v.), holding an exhibition of their works in his studio after they were rejected at the Salon. During his final years, Bonvin suffered from blindness and paralysis and died a broken man in 1887.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1817",
"death_year": "1887",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2010-06-07T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1860,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1860",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:53:05.852000"
}
}