Beginning his training with Jean-François Legendre-Héral in Lyon, the young Bonnassieux was noticed by his teacher who accompanied him to Paris where he recommended him to David d'Angers. Bonnassieux successfully passed the entrance examination to the École des Beaux-arts in 1834 and won the Prix de Rome with Socrate drinking the Hemlock two years later, in 1836. His training at the Académie de France in Rome would be under the direction of the painter Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, director of the Villa Medici between 1835 and 1841. Bonnassieux made several portraits of Ingres, including our model which derives from the half-length bust made by Eugène Guillame for the monument to the memory of the painter at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and still visible at the school.
But the definitive bust of Bonnassieux is a marble destined for the painter's burial in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.
Our model represents Ingres in the costume of an academician, the collar decorated with laurel leaves, the head turned 3/4.
The portrait rests on an imposing quadrilateral pedestal.
Rare copy in plaster.
Modern cast.
Dim.:
Height: 60 cm / 23,6 in
Width: 30 cm / 11,8 in
Depth: 24 cm / 9,5 in