Pierre Bonirote - The House of the Poet in Pompeii, known as the House of Homer, 1854

Signed and dated lower left.

Framed. Size of the frame : 52,2 x 64,3 cm.

Bibliography: Marius Audin and Eugène Vial, Dictionnaire des artistes et ouvriers d'art du Lyonnais, Paris, Bibliothèque d'Art et d'Archéologie, 1918, p. 106 (as "La Maison de Poète").

History: Lyon, Collection Dhikeos, his mark in the lower right corner (L. 3529)

Student of Pierre Révoil and Claude Bonnefond in Lyon, Pierre Bonirote (Lyon, 1811 - Orliénas, 1891) stayed in Rome twice, where he met his friend Hippolyte Flandrin who was then a boarder at the Académie de France. In 1840, on the advice of Ingres, he seized the opportunity to found a school of painting in Athens. Three years later, he returned to Lyon, where he was appointed professor at the Ecole des Beaux-arts, and exhibited in the Parisian and Lyonian salons. He then produced works inspired by his memories of Italy and Greece, of which the watercolor we present here is one. It describes a view of the ruins of the House of the Poet in Pompeii, unearthed between 1824 and 1826, which Bonirote must have visited during one of his trips.