Rating and value of paintings by Félix Bonnet, dit Tobeen

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Artist's rating and value

An important painter of the École de Paris, Félix Bonnet, whose artist's name is Tobeen, enjoys a certain recognition on the art market.

His Cubist-influenced works are highly sought-after by collectors, with auction prices ranging from €20 to €334,000.

A work signed by Tobeen can fetch hundreds of thousands of euros at auction, as demonstrated by his oil on canvas Pelotaris, dating from 1912, which sold for over €360,500 in 2013, whereas it was estimated at between €400,700 and €52,300.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The life of Tobeen

Born Félix Bonnet in Bordeaux in 1880, Tobeen was an artist whose career embraced the major trends in early 20th-century art, while retaining a rare singularity.

Born into a modest family, he discovered engraving and drawing at an early age, and moved to Paris at the turn of the century in search of an artistic career.

Tobeen quickly moved into the hustle and bustle of Paris, where he made friends with the avant-garde artists of the day, particularly the Cubists, whom he rubbed shoulders with at the Bateau-Lavoir.

Influenced by the geometric rigor of Cubism, he nevertheless developed a pictorial sensibility that set him apart from his contemporaries. While Braque and Picasso focused on deconstructing form to reveal its essence, Tobeen's approach was more lyrical.

He takes part in the Salon d'or exhibition with the Duchamp brothers, and in particular the cubist Jacques Villon.

His compositions, often influenced by landscapes of the Basque country, are full of softness and harmony, where color seems to breathe freely, in dialogue with form. Tobeen's cubism is neither dry nor purely analytical, but rather invites a serene, almost poetic contemplation of the world.

The artist does not limit himself to painting. He also excels in the art of engraving, and his commitment to modernity leads him to experiment with several artistic techniques, while remaining faithful to his love of natural, traditional motifs.

Rooted in his native land, he continues to draw on the Basque landscapes, their relief and changing light, nourishing his work with a narrative depth rarely equaled in cubism.

Tobeen, though discreet on the international art scene, leaves behind a rich and personal body of work. His singular vision, subtly blended with the major trends of his time, lends his art a precious timelessness.

Focus on the painting Paysage basque, Tobeen, 1911

Born Félix Bonnet in Bordeaux in 1880, Tobeen was an artist whose career embraced the major trends in early 20th-century art, while retaining a rare singularity.

Born into a modest family, he discovered engraving and drawing at an early age, and moved to Paris at the turn of the century in search of an artistic career.

Tobeen quickly moved into the hustle and bustle of Paris, where he made friends with the avant-garde artists of the day, particularly the Cubists, whom he rubbed shoulders with at the Bateau-Lavoir.

Influenced by the geometric rigor of cubism, he nevertheless developed a pictorial sensibility that set him apart from his contemporaries. While Braque and Picasso strove to deconstruct form in order to reveal its essence, Tobeen's approach was more lyrical.

His compositions, often influenced by landscapes of the Basque country, are full of softness and harmony, where color seems to breathe freely, in dialogue with form. Tobeen's cubism is neither dry nor purely analytical, but rather invites a serene, almost poetic contemplation of the world.

The artist does not limit himself to painting. He also excels in the art of engraving, and his commitment to modernity leads him to experiment with several artistic techniques, while remaining faithful to his love of natural, traditional motifs.

Rooted in his native land, he continues to draw on the Basque landscapes, their relief and changing light, nourishing his work with a narrative depth rarely equaled in cubism.

Tobeen, though discreet on the international art scene, leaves behind a rich and personal body of work. His singular vision, subtly blended with the major trends of his time, lends his art a precious timelessness.

Tobeen and cubism

Tobeen, whose real name was Félix Elie Bonnet, occupies a singular place in the history of art, particularly within the Cubist movement, which he interpreted with a sensitivity all his own.

Born in Bordeaux in 1880, Tobeen is often associated with the École de Paris, where he developed his approach to cubism, without, however, locking himself into the strict rules of this movement.

Whereas the major figures of Cubism, such as Picasso and Braque, deconstruct forms in rigorous geometric fragmentation, Tobeen stands out for a more poetic, accessible style, in which abstraction never sacrifices the link with tangible reality.

If we compare his work with that of Braque or Picasso, we immediately notice that Tobeen does not seek to dislocate the subject to the point of incomprehensibility.

Where the two cubist pioneers swept their compositions into an almost hermetic complexity, Tobeen prefers a gentler simplification of form.

His painting adopts a clear, structured geometry, but retains an immediate legibility, giving his works an almost narrative quality.

Take, for example, his landscapes of the Basque country: houses, trees and hills are not dissolved into a mosaic of planes and angles, but rather shaped into rounded, almost sculptural forms that invite contemplation rather than deconstruction.

In this respect, Tobeen's approach is more reminiscent of that of Fernand Légeranother artist who humanized cubism. Like Léger, Tobeen injects a warmth and fluidity into his compositions that contrasts with the colder rigor of analytical cubism.

With Léger, this translates into an almost industrial monumentality of form; with Tobeen, it's more of an organic approach, where natural elements seem to vibrate under the brush, as in a peaceful scene suspended in time.

It could be said that Tobeen reconciles cubism with a more romantic vision of landscape, one in which nature retains its evocative power despite the geometric reduction of forms.

In this quest for balance between modernity and tradition, Tobeen can also be compared to another Basque painter, Jean-Emile Laboureur. Both anchor their cubism in a terroir, in scenes of life and landscapes that resonate with a certain rural simplicity.

But where Laboureur tends towards an almost linear graphic minimalism, Tobeen prefers more carnal compositions, in which curves and color take center stage. It is this tension between abstraction and sensuality that sets Tobeen apart from the rest of Cubism.

Tobeen's palette also differed from that of his contemporaries. Whereas the Cubists liked to use sober hues, often dominated by grays, ochres and browns, Tobeen adopted brighter, more contrasting colors, while maintaining a soft, balanced harmony.

His greens and reds, though stylized, retain an earthy quality that reinforces the anchoring of his subjects in an identifiable reality. It's a cubism with landscape accents, where abstraction never completely erases the immediate recognition of the motif.

Ultimately, Tobeen positions himself as a singular cubist, at the crossroads of several influences. Where Picasso and Braque push abstraction to its limits, he uses Cubist language to celebrate everyday life, landscape and nature.

This approach echoes a need for reconciliation between the avant-garde and a pictorial tradition more rooted in the direct representation of the world. In this sense, Tobeen is a precursor of a humanized Cubism, an artist who manages to strike a delicate balance between formal modernity and poetic evocation.

In his works, nature is structured into pure forms without losing its emotional dimension, making him a special figure in the panorama of European Cubism.

Tobeen's imprint on his era

Tobeen is a painter who is little known to the general public today, but who nevertheless occupies an important place on the art market.

His works are highly prized by collectors, who play a major role in preserving his work, even if some of them are kept in museums and open to the public. 

His signature

Not all of Tobeen's works are signed.

Although there are variations, here is a first example of its signature:

Appraising your property

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A member of our team of experts and certified auctioneers will contact you to provide an estimate of the market value of your work.

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