Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries

Léon Bonvin

Woman at work in the Inn at Vaugirard, 1856

VAT reduced rate

Auction Closed

July 5, 10:16 AM GMT

Estimate

15,000 - 20,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Léon Bonvin

Paris 1834 - 1866 Meudon

Woman at work in the Inn at Vaugirard, 1856

Pen and brown ink and brown and grey wash with transparent opaque watercolour, gouache and gum arabic;

signed and dated in brown ink, lower left: L. Bonvin 1856

159 by 233 mm

Gustave Tempelaere (1840-1904), Paris,
thence by descent to his son,
Julien Tempelaere (1876-1961), Paris,
thence by descent,
Private Collection, Paris

M. Guichané and G. Weisberg, Léon Bonvin: Drawn to the Everyday, 1834–1866, Paris 2022, p. 223, no. 14, p. 116, fig. 14, reproduced, and p. 57

This serene and highly atmospheric interior scene, depicting a woman absorbed in her work in the Bonvin famiy Inn at Vaugirard, dates to 1856, a period in which the artist was, probably on the advice of his half-brother François, moving away from the exclusive use of black chalk in his drawings, instead beginning to experiment with both ink and watercolour.

The scene is compositionally highly comparable to a fine black chalk drawing of the same subject in the Fondation Custodia, Paris,¹ though the composition extends further to the left in the present work.

1. see M. Guichané and G. Weisberg, op.cit., p. 228, no. 29, p. 131, fig. 29, reproduced