Leon Joseph Florentin Bonnat 1833-1922

I had a strange experience which I've been meaning to write about for a while now. It is nothing grand or overwhelming but certainly something that jarred with me and caused me a moment's wobble, so to speak. 

A good friend of mine was reading Gustave Flaubert's 'A Sentimental Education', and the image chosen for the front cover was 'A Self Portrait by Leon Bonnat'. I was sat opposite her at the time and could have quite literally ripped the book from her hands because of the strange effect the picture had on me.

Have you ever seen someone in the street, and though you know nothing about them or what they may be like, wanted them? Have you ever wanted to kiss someone upon the moment of seeing them for the first time or craved to know everything about them without any real reason for wanting to do so? That's what I did... 

But what do you do when it's a painting?

The slight young man with sad brown eyes, glancing curiously over his shoulder made my heart skip a beat. Every detail of the painting made me instantly sorry that I do not and will never know this person. I wanted to ask him why he was sad, what the tiny gold ring on his little finger symbolises or who he was staring at behind him. I wanted to touch his tousled hair, feel the roughness of his beard, hold his narrow artists hands. 

It became quite the joke that I had fallen for a dead guy in a painting, and quite rightly so... It is, after all, ridiculous. But, my god, I have never been so instantly hit by something as simple as an image. I couldn't stop looking at it. I felt like a bit of a secret psycho everytime I googled the image or looked up the book in a nearby waterstones just to see the front cover. He quite simply took my breath away... I think the hardest thing is being captivated by something that no longer exists. I guess it's how paleontologists must feel, having studied prehistoric life, seen the fossils or exposed the past, all the time knowing they will never actually see a living, breathing dinosaur.

Leon Bonnat is my dinosaur... May we meet in another life so I may pour all my questions into your ear and ease my frustration at never having known you. I wonder where you are now?

x