Portrait of Charles Ephrussi

Charles Ephrussi was one of the most important figures in the Paris art world: a wealthy collector, the director of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, a patron who helped support several Impressionist painters including Renoir, and the model for Charles Swann in Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time.' That Ephrussi sat for Bonnat in 1906 rather than an Impressionist colleague reflects how he moved across art world factions rather than adhering to any single camp. Bonnat's portrait of him, late in both men's careers, is a record of two establishment figures who had lived through the full arc of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist modernism while remaining attached to serious easel painting. The panel support was a deliberate choice of intimacy and permanence appropriate to a collector and man of letters.

Oil on panel — an unusual support for Bonnat's mature portraiture — lending the work particular solidity and directness. The smaller, intimate format suits a collegial relationship between painter and sitter rather than the grand official portrait.