Antique 19th Century French Mythological Oil Painting by Marie-Abraham Rosalbin de Buncey, Pupil of Léon Cogniet Who Also Taught Rosa Bonheur, Meissonier and Bonnat

In a twilight woodland clearing, three figures emerge against a sky that glows red as if from a distant fire. On the left, a standing nymph in a diaphanous veil raises her arm in a gesture of invocation. In the foreground, a bather seen from behind leans toward a small nude putto who advances toward her with cheerful, childlike insistence. This is Eros, playful and sensual, doing what mythology assigned him.

The bather leans toward him not with surprise but with receptiveness. Love is arriving. The standing figure on the left presides over the moment like a blessing presence, a fairy or divine spirit sanctioning what is about to happen. It is an optimistic painting beneath its dark palette. Something good is coming. Someone is watching over it. The light in the background feels less like a fire and more like a promise.

The reddish, diffuse light models the flesh with vigorous blended strokes, giving the whole composition the velvety, dreamy quality characteristic of the fete galante tradition, updated here with the darker atmospheric mood of 19th-century French Romanticism. The palette of deep browns, woody greens, and sunset carmines feels entirely of its moment: warm, intimate, and slightly theatrical in the manner of the Second Empire.

About the Artist
Marie-Abraham Rosalbin de Buncey (1833-1891) was trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Leon Cogniet, one of the most influential teachers of 19th-century French academic painting. Cogniet won the Prix de Rome in 1817, painted a ceiling for the Louvre, and over the course of his career trained more than a hundred notable artists, among them Rosa Bonheur, Jean-Paul Laurens, Ernest Meissonier, and Leon Bonnat. Bonnat would go on to train John Singer Sargent, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edvard Munch, and Georges Braque. Rosalbin de Buncey and Bonnat were in the same atelier. 

Rosalbin de Buncey exhibited at the Salon of 1879 and specialized in mythological and allegorical subjects, historical scenes, and genre painting, with a particular affinity for female figures in golden-lit wooded settings — exactly the subject of this panel. His paintings are held in the public collections of Chambery, Montpellier, Pontoise, Reims, and Tashkent.

Why We Love It
The atmosphere is what stops you first. That burning red-orange sky glowing through the dark canopy of trees illuminates everything from behind rather than above, giving the whole scene the feeling of something sacred happening at dusk. And beneath the dark palette, the story is an optimistic one: love arriving, blessed by a divine presence.

Key Features:

• Origin: France
• Medium: Oil on wood panel
• Period: 19th century, Napoleon III
• Signature: Signed lower left by the artist
• Dimensions: 23.8" x 21.7"
• Condition: Excellent antique condition. Period Napoleon III giltwood frame with wide raised laurel leaf border, in good condition, reinforced on reverse. Please see photos for details.