LÉON JOSEPH FLORENTIN BONNAT (20 June 1833 – 8 September 1922) was a French painter, Grand Officer of the Légion d’honneur and professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
He was considered to be one of the most celebrated portrait artists of his day, receiving commissions from many of the wealthiest and most influential families of the period. His subjects included Victor Hugo, Louis Pasteur, and French President Adolphe Thiers. He was heavily influenced by the Spanish Old Masters Velasquez, Murillo, and Zurbarán, He also later painted a number of religious and mythical works in the realist style of Velasquez which drew immense praise and which are considered by many to be his greatest accomplishments.
In 1882, he became a professor at The École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in May, 1905, became the school’s director. John Singer Sargent and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were two of his more notable pupils. Today his works hang in some of the finest museums in the world including The Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Panthéon in Paris.
Bonnat died on 8 September 1922 (aged 89) at Monchy-Saint-Éloi; he never married and lived for much of his life with his mother and sister in the Place Vintimille (renamed Place Adolphe-Max since 1940).
