A portrait of a young girl 1889

Léon Bonnat, who was well known as a portrait painter, created this oil painting, A Portrait of a Young Girl, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Bonnat trained in Paris in the studio of Paul Delaroche. He was part of a generation of French artists for whom realism was a guiding star. The somewhat exotic clothing the young girl is wearing situates this portrait within a longer history of Orientalism in French art. The French colonial presence in North Africa and the Middle East meant that French artists often travelled to these places and represented what they saw. This portrait, with its interest in the ethnic "type," reflects how the French imagined the world and their place in it. By better understanding Bonnat's own biography, along with the broader social and political context of the French Third Republic, we can develop a richer sense of the cultural work this image performs.