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I was well acquainted with the late M. Bonnat, a bright, cheery little Frenchman of great energy, some knowledge of the Fanti, or rather the Ashanti, language, and perfect experience of the native character.
It is a very strange thing how German critics have taken for granted that the British Army had deteriorated, while the opinion of all those who were in close touch with it was that it was never so good. Even some of the French experts made the same mistake, and Gen. Bonnat counseled his countrymen not to rely upon it, since "it would take refuge amid its islands at the first reverse."
In this way we halted before the "Martyrdom of Saint Denis," by Bonnat, the two "Adorations," by Bouguereau, a landscape of Bernier's, some other landscapes, sea pieces, and portraits. At last we left the oil paintings. In the open gallery, which runs around the inside of the huge oblong and looks on the court, the watercolors, engravings, and drawings slumbered, neglected.
Thus began the Tákwá mines, where, by a kind of irony of Fate, the beginner was buried. M. Bonnat wisely intended to open operations with wet-working. At Axim I was shown a model flume, made to order after the plans of a M. Boisonnet, or, as he signs himself, 'boisonnet. He was reported to be a large landed-proprietor who had made a fortune by mining in French Guiana.
This is usually night-work, and all the dark hours will be wasted in grinding down a cubic foot of stone. The late M. Bonnat had probably read Mr.
The walls, hung with dark green damask, ill-lighted by one lamp, with a pink shade, placed upon a pedestal at some distance from the bed, to avoid fatigue to the sick man's eyes, had for their only ornament a likeness of my mother by Bonnat, one of his first female portraits.
A portrait by Bonnat blinks nothing in the subject; its aim and accomplishment are the rendering of the character in a vivid fashion including the reproduction of cobalt cravats and creased trousers even which would have mightily embarrassed Van Dyck or Velasquez. Ribot reproduces Ribera often, but he deals with fewer externals, fewer effects, taken in the widest sense.
Among the moderns, Corot's portrait of himself is one of the most memorable, but Fantin Latour, Flandrin, Leon Bonnat, and Lenbach are all strong and modest; which one cannot say of our own Leighton. Among the later English heads Orchardson's is notable, but Mr. Sargent's is disappointing.
The great portrait-painters of the day Carolus-Duran, Bonnat, Ribot are realists to the core. They are very far from being purely portrait-painters of course, and their realism shows itself with splendid distinction in other works. Few painters of the nude have anything to their credit as fine as the figure M. Carolus-Duran exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1889.
In this way we halted before the "Martyrdom of Saint Denis," by Bonnat, the two "Adorations," by Bouguereau, a landscape of Bernier's, some other landscapes, sea pieces, and portraits. At last we left the oil paintings. In the open gallery, which runs around the inside of the huge oblong and looks on the court, the watercolors, engravings, and drawings slumbered, neglected.
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