Bonnat, Leon (b Bayonne, 20 June 1833; d Monchy-Saint-Eloi, Oise, 8 Sept 1922).

French painter, collector and teacher. He lived in Madrid from 1846 to 1853, where his father owned a bookshop, and there he studied with both José de Madrazo y Agudo and Federico de Madrazo y Küntz. After moving to Paris in 1854, he entered Léon Cogniet’s atelier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and competed for the Prix de Rome in 1854, 1855 and 1857. He won second prize in 1857 with the Resurrection of Lazarus (Bayonne, Mus. Bonnat), a painting characterized by the jury as frank, firm and powerful, terms applied to his art throughout his career. His early paintings of historical and religious subjects gave way in the late 1860s to the less esteemed field of genre—scenes of Italian life and the Near East—based on sketches made during visits to Italy (1858–60) and the Near East and Greece (1868–70).