Léon Bonnat

Léon Bonnat began his formal artistic training at the royal academy of art in Madrid, where his family moved around 1846. His primary master was the leading artist in the Spanish capital, Federico de Madrazo, and Bonnat was one of the few foreign artists of the nineteenth century to study Spanish art, largely through the Prado Museum, as part of an official curriculum. After the death of his father in 1853, Bonnat and his family moved to Paris, where he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1854 and the independent atelier run by Cogniet (q.v.). During these years, Bonnat received annual...