Pierre BONIROTE (1811 - 1891), Animated landscape (1876)

This artist, who practiced all genres and left an important production, must be cited among landscape painters for his numerous views of Italy and Greece, and deserves a place of choice in the Orientalist school.


A student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in Révoil's class, he won the Painting Prize in 1832. During his stay in Rome in 1836, he travelled throughout the peninsula and accumulated sketches. He then met Ingres, Flandrin and especially the Duchess of Piacenza, who in 1840 commissioned him to found a School of Painting in Athens, which he directed for three years.


As in Italy, he multiplied his studies on the subject, in sepia or watercolour: landscapes, monuments and local types. He is interested in the archaeological updates that he evokes in charming paintings animated by a picturesque and colorful population and which also make his art a valuable documentary source for the knowledge of classical architecture and the state of its conservation at the time.

He painted in a beautiful, unctuous manner, working with his ochres and whites, which he enhanced with the colours of a rich palette (especially for the clothes). With a few warm and luminous touches, he knows how to set up his composition. His painting is similar to that of Chassériau. We also owe him landscapes of the Lyonnais. He exhibited at the Salon of Lyon from 1833 to 1892 and at that of Paris from 1842 to 1870.