Young Woman with a Mandolin, Portrait of Louison Köhler (c. 1873–1874): Art, History and Details

Young Woman with a Mandolin, Portrait of Louison Köhler (c. 1873–1874) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is François Bonvin (French, 1817–1887).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Bonvin was fascinated by the realism of 17th-century Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish still life paintings. He was also aware of the French Realist movement, a highly candid, straightforward style with political overtones. This work embodies both the realism for which Bonvin was famous and the still life paintings of earlier periods. The woman in the painting is Louison Köhler (1850–?), the artist's mistress. After two failed marriages, Bonvin met her in 1870, and she remained with him until his death, appearing in several of his paintings. The image of the reclining woman hanging directly over Louison's head probably suggests the carnal nature of their relationship. Bonvin borrowed this image—a swooning, overjoyed female—from the famous painting Bacchanal by Titian (1485–1576), now in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

Object facts

• Title: Young Woman with a Mandolin, Portrait of Louison Köhler
• Date: c. 1873–1874
• Creator attribution: François Bonvin (French, 1817–1887)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 70.5 x 62.2 x 7.6 cm (27 3/4 x 24 1/2 x 3 in.); Unframed: 54.9 x 46 cm (21 5/8 x 18 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1977.124

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Gabriel Weisberg, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Aug. 5, 2014, in CMA curatorial file.
• Weisberg, Gabriel P. Breaking the Mold: The Legacy of the Noah L. and Muriel S. Butkin Collection of Nineteenth-Century French Art. Notre Dame, Indiana: Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, 2012.
• Weisberg, Gabriel P. Bonvin. Paris: Éditions Geoffroy-Dechaume, 1979.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.