Still Life with Basket of Oranges

Description This watercolor shows Bonvin's knowledge of the French still-life painter, Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699?1779), who worked around one hundred years prior to Bonvin's death. Bonvin includes a wicker basket, a knife, nuts, and brightly colored fruit packed in moss echoing Chardin's earlier composition. Bonvin's better-known half-brother, the Realist painter François (1817?87), may have been instrumental in interesting the artist in Chardin's work and linking him to the Parisian art scene more generally. In addition, Bonvin's café-bar was frequented by artists from Paris with whom Bonvin could have discussed art and art history.

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
5/15/1972	Treatment	re-housed
1/01/2002	Treatment	examined for exhibition; re-housed; mounted; cleaned; other

Exhibitions

• The Essence of Line: French Drawings from Ingres to Degas. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma. 2005-2006.
• Near Paris: The Watercolors of Leon Bonvin. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2012.

Provenance William T. / Henry Walters Collection, Baltimore [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Inscriptions [Signature and date] In dark brown ink, lower left: Léon Bonvin 63; [Text] In graphite near center upper edge: Left Bottom; [Number] In graphite, center, verso: E4; [Number] In graphite at lower left corner, verso: 13; [Number] In traces of erased graphite, right lower edge, verso: 309

Credit Acquired by William T. or Henry Walters