Self-Portrait

Somberly dressed in jacket and cravat, François Bonvin depicts himself with a serious and intense expression matched by the composition's dark tonality. Bonvin's grainy, dense application of black dramatically contrasts with the bare white paper which illuminates much of his face. This spotlight effect focuses our attention on Bonvin's self-assured gaze and his unsparing self-introspection in black chalk.

When Bonvin drew this self-portrait he was about thirty years old. His artistic career was gaining momentum after his first successful exhibition in 1844. Like many Realist artists, Bonvin looked to Dutch artists of the 1600s, whose works could be viewed at the Louvre, for his models. Rembrandt was especially important to Bonvin and this drawing recalls Rembrandt's many dramatic, probing self-portraits. Around this time, Bonvin and Gustave Courbet had struck up a friendship and Bonvin was undoubtedly influenced by Courbet's commitment to realism in art, his black chalk drawings, and memorable self-portraits.