FRANÇOIS-LÉON BENOUVILLE (1821-1859)

WOMEN BRINGING SACRIFICES TO A CLASSICAL TEMPLE
Signed & dated l.r. L. Benouville / Rome Juillet 1851
Pencil with grey wash, heightened with white
20.5 x 17 cm
 
PROVENANCE:
With Colnaghi, New York;
Private collection, U.K.
 
 
 
 
 
This drawing relates to two other studies of the same subject now in the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Rouen (Inv. 897.6.103 (358) and 897.6.95A (339)) [1] 
 
 
François-Léon Benouville, generally known as Léon Benouville, was one of the most promising history painters of his time, and sadly died young from typhoid fever aged just thirty-eight.
Both Léon and his brother Jean-Achille studied in the studio of François-Edouard Picot, in Paris, before they both enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts at the age of sixteen. Léon began to exhibit at the Salon almost immediately after this, and won the prestigious Prix de Rome for history painting in 1845 (sharing the award with Alexandre Cabanel), as his brother did for historic landscape painting the very same year.
 
Léon spent just a year in Italy, where he became interested in Early Christian art and the monumentality of the figures depicted. Sadly, very few large-scale works by Léon survive, as one of his most important commissions, a series of works in collaboration with Cabanel for the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, were destroyed in the fire that was started by the Communards in 1871.