Intérieur de Communanté: Religieuse se préparant pour le repas, c. 1867 by François Bonvin (French, 1817 - 1887)
François Bonvin
French, 1817 - 1887

Intérieur de Communanté: Religieuse se préparant pour le repas

c. 1867
Pen and brown ink and brown and gray wash on paper
6 1/4 x 4 5/8 inches (15.88 x 11.75 centimeters)
Framed: 12 x 10 inches (30.48 x 25.4 centimeters)

Signed on verso: F. Bonvin 2827 (on the back of a wedding announcement for Jeanne Carrier-Belleuse)

SOLD

Provenance:
Galerie Berès, Quai Voltaire, Paris, 1999
Private Collection, New York

Exhibited:
Galerie Berés, Quai Voltaire, Paris, 1999;
The Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, PA, 2000

Literature:
Anisabelle Berés and Michael Arveiller, François Bonvin, the Master of the ‘Realist School,' (Galerie Berés, Paris and the Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, 1999): no. 67 (illus.)

In the catalogue for the 1999 Frick Art and Historical Center exhibition Francois Bonvin, the Master of the “Realist School,” Anisabelle Beres and Michel Arneiller write:

This heretofore unpublished drawing, with its emphatic hatching, shows us a young Sister washing her hands at a copper fountain at the entrance of the refectory. Her grey robe and black scapular indicate probably that she is one of the nuns from the Saint Germain hospital, a Sister of the Charity, one of the many we will see in his work…. In the background, the refectory is already crowded with Sisters, standing at their places, awaiting the graces. During this period, Bonvin often used a very particular ink-and-wash technique. The influence of the Dutch masters is very strong here, both in the technique and in the lines themselves; it is especially reminiscent of Rembrandt’s drawing and composition. Bonvin had been exploiting the device of allowing his viewer to glimpse another room since 1857; it is as a direct influence of the Northern schools. This is his own vision of art as an expression of the spiritual life, a vision of the soul painted with the aid of common ordinary subjects.

François Bonvin (French, 1817 - 1887)

Selected Museum Collections:
Musée d?Orsay and Musée du Louvre département des Arts graphiques, Paris; National Gallery, London; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Musée Rolin, Autun; Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Musée Baron Gérard, Bayeux; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chambéry; Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Musée national de château de Compiègne; Bowes Museum, County Durham, UK; Musée des Beaux-Arts and Musée National Magnin, Dijon; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole; Musée de Grenoble; Musée d?Art et d?Histoire de Lisieux; Musée des Ursulines de Mâcon; Musée Cantini and Musée Grobet-Labadié, Marseille; Musée Ingres, Montauban; Musée Fabre, Montpellier; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen; Musée international de la Chassure, Romans; Telfair Museum, Savannah; Musée d?Art et d?Archéologie, Senlis; Musée des Augustins, Toulouse; Musée d?Art Moderne de Troyes;

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  • Intérieur de Communanté: Religieuse se préparant pour le repas, c. 1867 by François Bonvin (French, 1817 - 1887)

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