Self-portrait / Portrait of a young Man

This self-portrait on wood, dated 1855 and held at the Musée d'Orsay, shows Bonnat at twenty-one — returned to Paris from Madrid and beginning formal training at the École des Beaux-Arts. The double attribution in the title suggests uncertainty about whether this is a self-portrait or a portrait of another young man; such ambiguity was common with early unsigned works. The wood support is unusual for Bonnat's portraits and may reflect influence from Northern European panel painting traditions encountered in the Louvre. The Musée d'Orsay, focused on French art from 1848 to 1914, holds this at the very beginning of that period — when Bonnat was a barely-known student at the start of a career that would bring him to the center of French artistic life and to the highest levels of official recognition.

Oil on wood panel with the careful, somewhat tight handling of a young painter working from close observation. Panel support lends the surface a particularly smooth quality, and the paint handling is more controlled and detailed than Bonnat's later assured work.