William-Adolphe Bouguereau (November 30, 1825 ¨C August 19, 1905) was a
French academic painter.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France on November 30,
1825, into a family of wine and olive oil merchants. He seemed destined to
join the family business but for the intervention of his uncle Eug¨¨ne, a
curate, who taught him classical and biblical subjects, and arranged for
Bouguereau to go to high school. Bouguereau showed artistic talent early on
and his father was convinced by a client to send him to the ¨¦cole des Beaux
-Arts in Bordeaux, where he won first prize in figure painting for a
depiction of Saint Roch. To earn extra money, he designed labels for jams
and preserves.
Through his uncle, Bouguereau was given a commission to paint portraits of
parishioners, and when his aunt matched the sum he earned, Bouguereau went
to Paris and became a student at the ¨¦cole des Beaux-Arts. To supplement
his formal training in drawing, he attended anatomical dissections and
studied historical costumes and archeology. He was admitted to the studio of
Francois-Edouard Picot, where he studied painting in the academic style.
Academic painting placed the highest status on historical and mythological
subjects and Bouguereau won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1850, with his
Zenobia Found by Shepherds on the Banks of the Araxes. His reward was a
stay at the Villa Medici in Rome, Italy, where in addition to formal lessons
he was able to study first-hand the Renaissance artists and their
masterpieces.
Bouguereau, completely in tune with the traditional Academic style,
exhibited at the annual exhibitions of the Paris Salon for his entire
working life.
An early reviewer stated, ¡°M. Bouguereau has a natural instinct and
knowledge of contour. The eurythmie of the human body preoccupies him, and
in recalling the happy results which, in this genre, the ancients and the
artists of the sixteenth century arrived at, one can only congratulate M.
Bouguereau in attempting to follow in their footsteps¡Raphael was inspired
by the ancients¡and no one accused him of not being original.¡±
Raphael was a favorite of Bouguereau and he took this review as a high
compliment. He had fulfilled one of the requirements of the Prix de Rome by
completing a old-master copy of Raphael¡¯s The Triumph of Galatea. In many
of his works, he followed the same classical approach to composition, form,
and subject matter.
In 1856, he married Marie-Nelly Monchablon and subsequently had five
children. By the late 1850¡¯s, he made strong connections with art dealers,
particularly Paul Durand-Ruel (later the champion of the Impressionists),
who helped clients buy paintings from artists who exhibited at the Salons.
The Salons annually drew over 300,000 people, thereby providing valuable
exposure to exhibited artists. Bouguereau¡¯s fame extended to England by the
1860¡¯s and then he bought a large house and studio in Montparnasse with his
growing income.
Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose realistic genre paintings and
mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects¡ªboth
pagan and Christian¡ªwith a heavy concentration on the female human body.
Although he created an idealized world, his almost photo-realistic style
brought to life his goddesses, nymphs, bathers, shepherdesses, and madonnas
in a way which was very appealing to rich art patrons of his time. The fact
that his peasants always had clean feet, pristine clothes, and beautiful
faces was totally acceptable to his admirers. Some critics, however,
preferred the honesty of Jean-Francois Millet¡¯s truer-to-life depiction of
hard-working farmers and laborers.
Bouguereau employed traditional methods of working up a painting, including
detailed pencil studies and oil sketches, and his careful method resulted in
a pleasing and accurate rendering of the human form. His painting of skin,
hands, and feet was particularly admired. He also used some of the religious
and erotic symbolism of the Old Masters, such as the ¡°broken pitcher¡±
which connoted lost innocence.
One of the rewards of staying within the Academic style and doing well in
the Salons was receiving commissions to decorate private houses, public
buildings, and churches. As was typical of these commissions, sometimes
Bouguereau would paint in his own style, and other times he had to conform
to an existing group style. Early on, Bouguereau was commissioned in all
three venues, which added enormously to his prestige and fame. He also made
reductions of his public paintings for sale to patrons, of which The
Annunciation (1888) is an example. He was also a successful portrait painter
though many of his paintings of wealthy patrons still remain in private
hands.
Bouguereau steadily gained the honors of the Academy, reaching Life Member
in 1876, and Commander of the Legion of Honor and Grand Medal of Honor in
1885. He began to teach drawing at the Acad¨¦mie Julian in 1875, a co-ed art
institution independent of the ¨¦cole des Beaux-Arts, with no entrance exams
and with nominal fees.
In 1877, both his wife and infant son died. At a rather advanced age,
Bouguereau was married for the second time in 1896, to fellow artist
Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau, one of his pupils. He also used his
influence to open many French art institutions to women for the first time,
including the Acad¨¦mie francaise.
Near the end of his life he described his love of his art, ¡°Each day I go
to my studio full of joy; in the evening when obliged to stop because of
darkness I can scarcely wait for the next morning to come¡if I cannot give
myself to my dear painting I am miserable¡±. He painted eight hundred and
twenty-six paintings.
Bouguereau died in La Rochelle at age 80 from heart disease.
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