François Bonvin

[1] Bonvin spent his free time at the Louvre where he especially appreciated the Dutch old masters and was welcomed by the collector Louis La Caze.

Bonvin married a laundress at the age of twenty, at about the same time that he secured a job at the headquarters of the Paris police, where he worked until 1850.

He exhibited in the Salon of 1850 with Courbet, and won recognition as a leading realist, painting truthfully the lives of the poor which he knew at first hand.

His subjects were still life and the everyday activities of common people, painted in a style that is reminiscent of Pieter de Hooch and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin.

In 1978 Editions Geoffroy-Dechaume published Les Maitres du XIX Siecle: Bonvin, Professor Gabriel Weisberg's critical analysis on the life and work of the artist.