Bonnat was born in Bayonne, but from 1846 to 1853 he lived in Madrid, where his father owned a bookshop. While tending his father's shop, he copied engravings of works by the Old Masters, developing a passion for drawing. In Madrid he received his artistic training under Madrazo. He later worked in Paris, where he became known as a leading portraitist, never without a commission. His many portraits show the influence of Velázquez, Jusepe de Ribera and other Spanish masters, as well as Titian and Van Dyke, whose works he studied in the Prado, which placed him at the forefront of painting in France in the 1850s, opposing neoclassicism and academicism. Following the period in Spain, Bonnat worked the studios of the history painters Paul Delaroche and Leon Cogniet in Paris. Despite repeated attempts, he failed to win the prix de Rome, finally receiving only a second prize. However, a scholarship from his native Bayonne allowed him to spend three years in Rome independently. During his stay in Rome, he became friends with Edgar Degas, Gustave Moreau, Jean-Jacques Henner and the sculptor Henri Chapu.
Career
Bonnat won a medal of honour in Paris in 1869, going on to become one of the leading artists of his day. Bonnat went on to win the Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur and became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1882. Bonnat was quite popular with American students in Paris. In addition to his native French, he spoke Spanish and Italian and knew English well, to the relief of many monolingual Americans. In May 1905 he succeeded Paul Dubois as director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Julius Kaplan characterised Bonnat as "a liberal teacher who stressed simplicity in art above high academic finish, as well as overall effect rather than detail." Bonnat's emphasis on overall effect on the one hand, and rigorous drawing on the other, put him in a middle position with respect to the Impressionists and academic painters like his friend Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1917, Bonnat was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Corresponding member.
Paintings
Bonnat's vivid portraits of contemporary celebrities are his most characteristic works, but his most important works are arguably his powerful religious paintings, such as his Christ on the Cross, Job, St Vincent Taking the Place of Two Galley Slaves, and the large Martyrdom of St Denis for the Pantheon in Paris. However, he received few commissions for religious and historical paintings, and most of his output consists of portraits. He also produced genre paintings of Italian peasants, and a small number of Orientalist scenes. The writers Émile Zola and Théophile Gautier were among Bonnat's supporters. Gautier hailed him as "the antithesis of Bouguereau," because of the stark naturalism and lack of surface finish that characterize Bonnat's work. Bonnat is an academic painter. He was a member of the Institute, one of the only 14 painters who had administrative power over the Academy des Beaux Arts and thereby the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He had friends and connections among the independent artists of his time as well, such as Edgar Degas, whom he met during his stay in Rome and who painted two portraits of Bonnat, and Édouard Manet, who shared his predilection for Spanish painting. He taught together with Pierre Puvis de Chavannes in the private atelier he ran before becoming professor at the École. He supported Auguste Rodin's candidacy for the Institut, and defended Gustave Courbet's submissions to the salon.
In his last years he made his painting evolve, from the influence of seventeenth-century painters and Goya, towards a more modern freedom of execution, scratching the brush and using the spatula, as well as a more colorful color gamut, as can be seen in his Self-portrait of the Prado Museum. In a gesture of gratitude for the help he had been provided in his youth, Bonnat built a museum in his native city of Bayonne, the Musée Bonnat. Most of the works in the museum are from Bonnat's personal collection of works of art, amassed over a lifetime of travelling around Europe. It includes an exceptionally fine collection of Old Master drawings from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to Ingres and Géricault. Bonnat died on 8 September 1922 at Monchy-Saint-Éloi, and was buried at the Cimitiére Saint-Etienne, Bayonne.
Personal life
Bonnat never married, and lived for much of his life with his mother and sister in the Place Vintimille.
"We wonder why Velázquez's infant has fake shoulders and why the head doesn't join properly...And how good it looks. While a head by Bonnat joins actual shoulders...And how bad it looks!" - Paul Gauguin
