FRANÇOIS BONVIN (Paris 1817 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye 1887)
The Piano: June 18, 1848
signed and dated F. Bonvin 18 Juin 1848 in the lower left; and inscribed on the stretcher “tableau ayant appartenu à Mme Aurore SAND petite fille de Georges SAND V. Dubourg 27/4/51 Drouot”
oil on canvas
9 5/8 x 7 1/2 inches (24.5 x 19 cm.)
PROVENANCE
Presumably Amantine – Aurore – Lucile Dupin, Baroness Dudevant (1804 – 1876) (pseudonym George Sand), and in-all-probability to
Aurore Dudevant-Sand (1866 – 1961)
Tableaux Modernes sale, M. Jacques Dubourg – Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 27, 1951, lot 96
Alfred Normand
Noortman Master Paintings, Maastricht, from whom purchased by
Private Collection, Washington, D.C., September 2004 until the present time
LITERATURE
Eddy Schavemaker, “François Bonvin, Dame au piano” in One Hundred Master Paintings, Noortman Master Paintings, Maastricht, 2005, pp. 220 -221, no. 64, illustrated
In this oil sketch of a modestly furnished room, a young woman plays a piano. Composed in varying shades of brown and dark grey, her light grey dress with its white waistband and collar serve to set her apart from the enveloping interior, with the music sheet in front of her acting like a spotlight. Part of a framed landscape is visible on the wall just above a pot of flowers on top of the piano. On a nearby chair a straw-hat rest on its side, as if she had just come from outside. The work is signed in the lower left F. Bonvin 18 Juin 1848. Arrestingly, François Bonvin has painted a supposed vision of domestic bliss, while in reality all hell was about to break loose in the streets of Paris. Just five days later in Paris from June 23 – 26, one of France’s bloodiest conflicts of the nineteenth century would take place. Thousands were killed and injured in a rebellion by the working class against the armed forces of an increasingly repressive republican government.[1]
Bonvin, himself of humble origins, was in the midst of his own rebellion. Mainly self-taught, “Bonvin, like Chardin, appears as a solitary figure in his own century”.[2] His first instructions began at the Ecole de Dessin in Paris from 1828 – 1830. In 1843 he enrolled at the Academie Suisse, Paris which was an informal yet influential art school devoid of instructors. Most importantly it is where he met fellow student Gustave Courbet and became involved with the Realistic movement. He concentrated on still life and genre, drawing inspiration from Chardin and the Dutch seventeenth century masters, particularly Pieter de Hooch.[3] Subject matter was taken from everyday life – “themes observed in modern reality only”.[4] Typically his works were small in scale, depicting sparse interiors of muted tones, executed by a fluid brush. “When Bonvin completed a painting, he fastidiously, almost scientifically, arrived at the most harmonious balance of forms and the best integration of light and dark”.[5]
Bonvin first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1847 and again in 1848. It would not be until the Salon of 1849 that he won a third-class medal for his entry La Cuisiniere (The Cook), and only then devote all his time to painting.[6] His other entries that year were Les Buveurs (The Drinkers) and an oil sketch Le Piano. By rejecting Romanticism’s tenants of idealism, emotionalism, drama, beauty and vivid coloration in works such as these, Bonvin “became a leading exponent of Realism”.[7] Oil sketches for the artist had the extreme advantage of fully highlighting “the spontaneity of his execution”.[8] Our painting which likely was very similar to the 1849 Salon entry, is a seminal example of this recurring theme in Bonvin’s oeuvre. Three other examples are in public collections: the Rijksmuseum and Cleveland Museum of Art both have drawings dated 1860, and the Burrell Collection, Glasgow an oil from 1862. Although all are similar compositions, featuring a woman turned away from the viewer while playing a piano, their prevailing mood of disquiet appears more internal than external. The precise dating of our painting leaves little doubt that Bonvin has painted either an oasis or fortress against the imminent insurrection that had been brewing for months. Executed at the very start of the Realism movement, “broadly considered the beginning of modern art”,[9] the power of the quiet rebellion depicted by this formative work remains undaunted.
In 1851 he exhibited L’Ecole des Petites Orphelines (The School for Little Orphans) which won a second-class medal. Later he was awarded the designation of hors concours, which would make Bonvin ineligible for any more medals, but afford him the right to be automatically included in the Salon and his work exempt from examination by its jury. Interestingly in 1859 the Salon jury rejected James McNeill Whistler’s At the Piano, now in the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, and regarded as his first major work. Instead Bonvin exhibited it at his studio along with other painters including Henri Fantin-Latour, Alphonse Legros and Théodule Ribot that he felt had been unfairly rejected.[10]
In 1870 Bonvin received the Legion d’Honneur, the highest French order of merit both military and civil. Works by the artist can now be found in museums throughout the world. But perhaps the most enduring tribute to the artist is in the august Benezit Dictionary of Artists which simply states: “Bonvin can be considered as one of the best genre painters of the nineteenth century”. (“Bonvin peut être considéré comme un des meilleurs peintres de genre du XIXe siècle.”)[11]
Due to the inscription on the painting’s stretcher, we know that the painting belonged to Aurore Sand, the granddaughter of George Sand, prior to its 1951 sale at Drouot in Paris. Aurore Sand inherited her grandmother’s chateau in Nohant and before her death in 1961 donated it to the French state to be preserved as a museum.[12] Presumably this painting as well was directly inherited from her grandmother, who was a friend of Bonvin.[13]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a Bonvin drawing of a Standing Peasant Girl dated 1847 that was originally owned by George Sand, but the subject of ours depicting a piano player would have held a deeper significance. Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, Baroness Dudevant was best known by her pen name George Sand. She was one of the most popular writers in Europe during her lifetime as well as one of the most notorious. She openly lived with her lover the composer Frederic Chopin. In 1838 Eugene Delacroix began a never finished painting of Chopin at the piano with Sand seated nearby. By 1848 the relationship would be over and Chopin dead the following year.[14]
This profound little painting presents a pictorial refuge from the uncertainties of life that are perpetually sought. What makes Bonvin’s The Piano: June 18, 1848 so compelling is the specificity of the unseen drama and sharp recognition of the response by the sitter. A harbinger of things to come, its realism confronts the viewer in a manner unavoidable and undeniably modern.
[1] Katrina Ford, “June Days Rebellion, France, 1848”, in St James Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide: Major Events in Labor History and Their Impact on encyclopedia.com.
[2] Gabriel P. Weisberg, Bonvin, Paris, Editions Geoffrey-Dechaume, 1979, p. 5.
[3] Biographical material taken from Gabriel P. Weisberg, ibid, pp. 21-22, 26; Gary Tinterow & Henri Loyrette, “François Bonvin” in Origins of Impressionism, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, p. 339; and “François Bonvin”, The J. Paul Getty Museum at getty.edu/art/collection/artists.
[4] Gabriel P. Weisberg, op.cit., p. 15
[5] Ibid, p. 14.
[6] Alan Bowness, “Courbet’s early subject matter” in French 19th Century painting and Literature: with Special Reference to the Relevance of Literary Subject - Matter to French Painting, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1972, p. 120.
[7] “François Bonvin” at getty.edu/art/collection/artists., op.cit.
[8] Gabriel P. Weisberg, op.cit., p. 31.
[9] Realism, theartstory.org.
[10] “At the Piano by James Abbott McNeal Whistler”, The Victorian Web, February 2, 2018 at victorianweb.org.
[11] E. Benezit, “François Bonvin” in Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, volume 2, Librairie Gründ, Paris, 1976, p. 167.
[12] “The Mellowing of George Sand: Mother, Grandmother, Gardner”, January 13, 2015, on literaryladiesguide.com.
[13] James Thomas Herbert Baily, “François Bonvin (1817 – 1887) by Gabriel Weisberg” in The Connoisseur, volume 205, October, 1980, p. 223.
[14] Stuart Dowell, “Chopin in Love”: How a brief encounter in Paris led to one of the greatest romances of the 19th century” at thefirstnews.com, March 1, 2020.