The Blacksmith’s Shop

François Bonvin painted quiet things: a copper fountain in a kitchen corner, a few vegetables on a table, a servant at work, a boy with a portfolio. His realism is gentle rather than political, with soft light and a restrained palette that recalls Chardin and the Dutch interiors of Pieter de Hooch. Born in Paris in 1817, the son of a policeman, he was largely self-taught. He studied the Dutch masters in the Louvre and counted the painter François Granet as his only mentor. Until 1850 he worked at the Paris police headquarters, painting in his spare time. He won a medal at the Salon of 1849, became one of the leading Realist painters of his generation and received the Légion d’honneur in 1870. His eyesight failed in the 1880s, and he died in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1887. His kitchen interiors and still lifes, such as the copper fountain and Nature Morte à l’Ombrelle, are Bonvin at his most typical.