Up from the Cellar (La sortie de la cave)

François Bonvin’s paintings, drawings, and prints often depicted women doing chores. We see them pouring water from pitchers, cutting bread for the family meal, ironing, or, as in this painting, fetching a container of wine. The setting is likely one Bonvin knew by heart: the background resembles the inn owned by his father in Vaugirard, just outside Paris. A dedicated realist, Bonvin found his models in the world around him. Picturing the small, routine moments of workaday life was not unusual among nineteenth-century artists, linking them to their Dutch forebears in the 1600s, who likewise favored heightened realism and themes of familiar daily activity.