The Maid
<p>This maid pours blood from a flayed ox’s head as she prepares to make a delicacy known as headcheese. Such paintings of everyday life were popular in late 19th-century France; as the nation experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization, audiences appreciated imagery that romanticized traditional rural life, with its perceived simplicity and virtuousness. François Bonvin regularly executed genre scenes reminiscent of works by 18th-century French artist <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/30723/jean-baptiste-simeon-chardin"> Jean Siméon Chardin</a>, who also celebrated the quiet dignity of domestic labor.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1870
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 44.5 × 30.8 cm (17 1/2 × 12 1/8 in.); Framed: 76.9 × 63.5 × 12.7 cm (30 1/4 × 25 × 5 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- François Bonvin
Artist
Printmaking
François Bonvin was a French painter of interior scenes and still lifes working primarily in oil during the 19th century. He specialized in intimate domestic arrangements and modest household objects rendered with meticulous attention to light and material texture. Active from the 1840s onward, Bonvin developed a practice centered on the quiet dignity of everyday life, working in a realist tradition that positioned humble subject matter as worthy of sustained artistic attention.
Full artist profile →More
More by François Bonvin
Gitaarspeler op een stoel
1887 · etching on paper
Still Life with a Copper Pot and Ladle
1879 · Black and red chalk with traces of incising on tan laid paper, laid down on tan wove paper
Stilleven van een inktpotje met een veer
1878 · chalk, paper
Young Woman with a Mandolin, Portrait of Louison Köhler
1873 · oil on fabric
Still life
1871 · oil paint (paint), canvas
Frontispiece
1871 · etching on laid paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- François Bonvin
- Year
- 1870
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 44.5 × 30.8 cm (17 1/2 × 12 1/8 in.); Framed: 76.9 × 63.5 × 12.7 cm (30 1/4 × 25 × 5 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1870-136721
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified