François BONVIN

An accomplished still life painter, François Bonvin preferred to depict humble household or kitchen objects in a manner inspired by the example of the 18th century painter Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, whose work he greatly admired. As a visitor to Bonvin’s studio noted, ‘When you penetrate into the interior, you think you have been transported into another world: furniture in rough wood, clay pitchers, copper cauldrons, frying pans – objects of all kinds were littered across the floor in the midst of vegetables and baskets of fruits: these were the artist’s props.’ In the last decade of his life, beset by poor health, Bonvin began to focus in particular on still life subjects, which he could do in the comfort of his home. 

Drawn on what was, for Bonvin, a fairly large sheet of paper, this still life is dated the 3rd of October 1879. That year was not a particularly productive one for the artist, who was often ill and overwhelmed by physical pain. The artist remained largely confined to his home and chose to depict the mundane objects that surrounded him. Only a handful of dated paintings and drawings, almost all of still life subjects and of modest dimensions, survive from this year. One of these, a small black chalk drawing of a similar subject of a candle and a book alongside a pair of scissors, today in a private collection, was drawn three days after the present sheet.