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{{short description|French academic painter (1825–1905)}}
{{Infobox Artist
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2021}}
| name = William-Adolphe Bouguereau
{{Infobox artist
| image = William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Artist Portrait (1879).jpg
|name = William-Adolphe Bouguereau
| imagesize = 170px
| caption = Self-Portrait (1879)|
|image = Self portrait, by William Bouguereau.jpg
|caption = ''[[Self-portrait]]'' (1879)
| birthname = William-Adolphe Bouguereau
| birthdate = {{birth date|1825|11|30|mf=y}}
|birth_date = {{birth date|1825|11|30|df=y}}
| location = [[La Rochelle]], [[France]]
|birth_place = [[La Rochelle]], France
| deathdate = {{death date and age|1905|8|19|1825|11|30|mf=y}}
|death_date = {{death date and age|1905|8|19|1825|11|30|df=y}}
| deathplace = La Rochelle, France
|death_place = La Rochelle, France
|field = Painter
| nationality = [[French people|French]]
| field = [[Painter]]
|training =
|movement = [[Realist visual arts|Realism]], [[Academic art]]
| training =
|spouse = {{plainlist|
| movement = [[Realism (visual arts)|Realism]]
* {{marriage|Nelly Monchablon|1866|1877|end=died}}
| famous works = ''[[The Birth of Venus (Bouguereau)|The Birth of Venus]]''<br>''[[The Bohemian]]''
* {{marriage|[[Elizabeth Jane Gardner]]|1896}}
| patrons =
| awards =
}}
}}
|works = {{Plainlist|
* ''[[The Birth of Venus (Bouguereau)|The Birth of Venus]]''
* ''[[The Bohemian (Bouguereau painting)|The Bohemian]]''
}}
}}
'''William-Adolphe Bouguereau''' ({{IPA|fr|wiljam adɔlf buɡ(ə)ʁo}}; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French [[Academic art|academic painter]]. In his realistic genre paintings, he used [[mythological]] themes, making modern interpretations of [[Classicism|classical]] subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body.<ref name="wissman">{{cite book|last=Wissman |first=Fronia E. |title=Bouguereau |publisher=Pomegranate Artbooks |location=San Francisco |year=1996 |page=10 |isbn=978-0876545829}}</ref> During his life, he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work.<ref name="glueck">{{cite web|last=Glueck |first=Grace |title=To Bouguereau, Art Was Strictly 'The Beautiful' |work=The New York Times |date=6 January 1985 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/06/arts/art-view-to-bouguereau-art-was-strickly-the-beautiful.html |access-date=27 January 2013}}</ref> As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he was reviled by the [[Impressionism|Impressionist]] avant-garde.<ref name="glueck"/> By the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art fell out of favor with the public, due in part to changing tastes.<ref name="glueck"/> In the 1980s, a revival of interest in [[figure painting]] led to a rediscovery of Bouguereau and his work.<ref name="glueck"/> He finished 822 known paintings, but the whereabouts of many are [[Lost artworks|still unknown]].<ref name="ross">{{cite web |last=Ross |first=Fred |title=William Bouguereau: Genius Reclaimed |work=Art Renewal |url=http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2000/Genuis_Reclaimed/genius1.php |access-date=27 January 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150918230217/http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2000/Genuis_Reclaimed/genius1.php |archive-date=18 September 2015}}</ref>


==Life and career==
'''William-Adolphe Bouguereau''' ([[November 30]], [[1825]] – [[August 19]], [[1905]]) was a [[France|French]] [[Academic art|academic painter]].


===Formative years===
== Biography ==
[[File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Portrait of Eugène Bouguereau (1850).jpg|thumb|180px|left|A portrait of Eugène Bouguereau (1850)]]
Bouguereau was born in [[La Rochelle]].
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born in [[La Rochelle]], France, on 30 November 1825, into a family of wine and olive oil merchants.<ref name="wissman-11">Wissman 1996, p. 11.</ref> The son of Théodore Bouguereau (born 1800) and Marie Bonnin (1804), known as Adeline, William was brought up a Catholic. He had an elder brother, Alfred, and a younger sister, Marie (known as Hanna), who died when she was seven. The family moved to [[Saint-Martin-de-Ré]] in 1832. Another sibling, Kitty, was born in 1834.<ref name="ReferenceA">Bartoli, Damien and Ross, Frederick C. ''William Bouguereau: His Life and Works'', 2010.</ref> At the age of twelve, Bouguereau went to [[Mortagne-sur-Gironde]] to stay with his uncle Eugène, a priest, and developed a love of nature, religion, and literature.<ref name=MV>Vachon, Marius, ''William-Adolphe Bouguereau'' (2018), pp. 241–244 (in German)</ref> In 1839, he was sent to study for the priesthood at a Catholic college in Pons. Here he learned to draw and paint from Louis Sage, who had studied under [[Ingres]]. Bouguereau then reluctantly left his studies to return to his family, now residing in [[Bordeaux]]. There he met a local artist, Charles Marionneau, and commenced at the Municipal School of Drawing and Painting in November 1841. Bouguereau also worked as a shop assistant, hand-colouring lithographs and making small paintings that were reproduced using [[chromolithography]]. He was soon the best pupil in his class and decided to become an artist in Paris. To fund the move, he sold portraits – 33 oils in three months. All were unsigned and only one has been traced.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> In 1845, he returned to Mortagne to spend more time with his uncle.<ref name=MV/> He arrived in Paris in March 1846, aged twenty.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>


[[File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1848, Égalité devant la mort, oil on canvas, 141 x 269 cm, Musée d'Orsay.jpg|thumb|upright=1.50|''Égalité devant la mort'' (''Equality Before Death''), 1848, oil on canvas, 141 × 269&nbsp;cm (55.5 × 105.9 in), [[Musée d'Orsay]], Paris. ''Equality'' is Bouguereau's first major painting, produced after two years at the {{Lang|fr|École des Beaux-Arts|italic=no}} de Paris at the age of 23.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/egalite-devant-la-mort-21302.html|title=Musée d'Orsay: William Bouguereau Equality before Death|website=www.musee-orsay.fr}}</ref>]]
A student at the [[École des Beaux-Arts]] in [[Paris]], he won the [[Prix de Rome]] in 1850 and his [[realism (arts)|realistic]] [[Genre works|genre painting]]s and mythological themes were exhibited at the annual exhibitions of the [[Paris Salon]] for his entire working life. Although he fell into disregard in the early [[20th century]], due perhaps to his staunch opposition to the [[Impressionism|Impressionists]], there is a new appreciation for his work. In his lifetime, Bouguereau painted eight hundred and twenty-six paintings.
Bouguereau became a student at the {{Lang|fr|[[École des Beaux-Arts]]|italic=no}}.<ref name="wissman-11"/> To supplement his formal training in drawing, he attended anatomical dissections and studied historical costumes and archeology. He was admitted to the studio of [[François-Édouard Picot]], where he studied painting in the academic style. ''[[Dante and Virgil|Dante and Virgil in Hell]]'' (1850) was an early example of his neo-classical works. Academic painting placed the highest status on historical and mythological subjects and Bouguereau determined to win the {{lang|fr|[[Prix de Rome]]|italic=no}}, which would gain him a three-year residence at the [[Villa Medici]] in Rome, Italy, where, in addition taking formal lessons, he could study firsthand the Renaissance artists and their masterpieces, as well as Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities.<ref name="andrews"/>
[[Image:Bouguereau venus detail.jpg|thumb|left|Detail from ''[[The Birth of Venus (Bouguereau)|The Birth of Venus]]'' by Bouguereau.]]
In his own time, Bouguereau was considered to be one of the greatest painters in the world. In 1900, his contemporaries [[Edgar Degas|Degas]] and [[Claude Monet|Monet]] reportedly named him as most likely to be remembered as the greatest 19th-century French painter by the year 2000, according to chairman Fred Ross of the [[Art Renewal Center]] - although with Degas' famous trenchant wit, and the aesthetic tendencies of the two Impressionists, it is possible the statement was meant as an [[irony|ironic]] comment on the taste of the future public. Bouguereau's works were eagerly bought, at high prices, especially by American millionaires. After about 1920, Bouguereau fell into disrepute. Some assert this may have been consciously engineered by the new "art expert establishment", who resented his former opposition to new developments in painting, but it is likely that more profound societal factors were instrumental to this enormous shift in taste and sensibility. For decades, his name was not even mentioned in encyclopedias. Today, over one hundred museums throughout the world exhibit his works.


===Villa Medici, Rome 1851–1854===
At a rather advanced age, Bouguereau was married for the second time, to fellow artist [[Elizabeth Jane Gardner|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 [[Académie française]].
The young artist entered the {{lang|fr|[[Prix de Rome]]|italic=no}} contest in April 1848. Soon after work began there were [[French Revolution of 1848|riots in Paris]], and Bouguereau enrolled in the National Guard. After an unsuccessful attempt to win the prize, he entered again in 1849. Following 106 days of competition, he again failed to win. His third attempt commenced unsuccessfully in April 1850 with ''[[Dante and Virgil]]'' but five months later, he heard he had won a joint first prize for ''[[Shepherds Find Zenobia on the Banks of the Araxes]]''.<ref name="andrews">{{cite book|last=Andrews |first=Gail |title=Birmingham Museum of Art: Guide to the Collection |publisher=D Giles Ltd |location=London |year=2011 |pages=222–223 |isbn=978-1904832775}}</ref>


Along with other category winners, he set off for Rome in December and finally arrived at the Villa Medici in January 1851. Bouguereau explored the city, making sketches and watercolours as he went. He also studied classical literature, which influenced his subject choice for the rest of his career.<ref name="andrews"/> He walked to [[Naples]] and on to Capri, [[Amalfi]] and [[Pompeii]]. Still based in Rome and working hard on course work, there were more explorations of Italy in 1852. Although he had a strong admiration for all traditional art, he particularly revered [[Greek sculpture]], [[Leonardo da Vinci]], [[Raphael]], [[Michelangelo]], [[Titian]], [[Rubens]] and [[Eugène Delacroix|Delacroix]]. In April 1854, he left Rome and returned to La Rochelle.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
He died in La Rochelle.


===Height of career===
== Real name dilemma ==
[[File:Bouguereau Nymphs and Satyr MMA cr.jpg|thumb|''Nymphs and Satyr'', 1873, oil on canvas, 260 × 180&nbsp;cm (102.4 × 70.9 in), [[Clark Art Institute]]]]
[[Image:SignaturebonguereauEnthusiastFRANCE.jpg|200px|thumb|W.Bouguereau signature (detail).]]
Bouguereau, painting within 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."<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 24.</ref>


[[Raphael]] was a favourite of Bouguereau and he took this review as a high compliment. He had fulfilled one of the requirements of the {{lang|fr|[[Prix de Rome]]|italic=no}} by completing an old-master copy of Raphael's ''[[Galatea (Raphael)|The Triumph of Galatea]]''. In many of his works, he followed the same classical approach to composition, form, and subject matter.<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 25.</ref> Bouguereau's graceful portraits of women were considered very charming, partly because he could beautify a sitter while also retaining her likeness.
Sources on his full name are contradictory; some give ''William-Adolphe Bouguereau'' (composed name), ''William Adolphe Bouguereau'' (usual and civil-only names according to the French tradition), while others give ''Adolphe William Bouguereau'' (with Adolphe as the usual name). However, the artist used to sign his works simply as William Bouguereau (hinting "William" was his given name, whatever the order), or more precisely as ''"W.Bouguereau.date"'' (French alphabet) and later as ''"W-BOVGVEREAV-date"'' (Latin alphabet).


Although Bouguereau spent most of his life in Paris, he returned to La Rochelle again and again throughout his professional life. He was revered in the town of his birth and undertook decorating commissions from local citizens. From the early 1870s, he and his family spent every summer in La Rochelle. In 1882, he decided that rather than rent he would purchase a house, as well as local farm buildings. By August of that year, the family's permanent summer base was on the rue Verdière. The artist commenced several paintings here and completed them in his Paris studio.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
== Exhibitions ==
His first modern exhibition appeared in 1974 at the [[New York Cultural Center]] as a curiosity. In 1984 the Borghi Gallery hosted the commercial show of his 23 oil paintings and 1 drawing. In the same year a major exhibition was organized by the [[Montréal Museum of Fine Arts]], in [[Canada]]. The exhibition opened at the Musée du Petit-Palais, in Paris, traveled to The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, and concluded in Montréal. This was the beginning of renewal of interest about Bouguereau. In 1997 Mark Borghi and Laura Borghi organized an early [[Internet]] exhibition.


[[File:William Adolphe Bouguereau The Holy Family.jpg|thumb|left|''The Holy Family'' (1863)]]
In 1979-1980, the company Royal Cornwall Ltd. produced a series of six china plates called "The Beauty of Bouguereau." The series featured one of Bouguereau's paintings on each of the plates. The plates were approximately 8 1/2 inches in diameter and limited to 19,500 copies of each plate. The plates were rimmed in 24-karat gold, individually numbered, and came with certificates.
Bouguereau flourished after his Villa Medici residence. In 1854–55 he decorated a pavilion at the grand house of a cousin in [[Angoulins]], including four large paintings of figures depicting the seasons. He was happy to undertake other commissions to pay off the debts accrued in Italy and to help his penniless mother. He decorated a mansion with nine large paintings of allegorical figures. In 1856, the Ministry of State for Fine Arts commissioned him to paint ''Emperor Napoleon III Visiting the Victims of the Tarascon Flood''. There were decorations for the chapel at Saint-Clotilde. He received the [[Legion of Honour]] on 12 July 1859. By this time, Bouguereau was turning away from history painting and lengthy commissions to work on more personal paintings, with realistic and rustic themes.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
* First plate: ''Lucie''
* Second plate: (unknown)
* Third plate: (unknown)
* Fourth plate: Detail of ''Solange et Enfant'' or ''Rest'' (1890)
* Fifth plate: ''Colette''
* Sixth plate: ''Jean et Jeanette''
* Known to be in the collection, but unknown which plate in sequence:
** Detail of ''Breton Brother and Sister'' (1871)


By the late 1850s, he had 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 [[Salon (art)|Salons]].<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 13.</ref> Thanks to Durand-Ruel, Bouguereau met [[Hugues Merle]], who later often was compared to Bouguereau. The Salons annually drew over 300,000 people, providing valuable exposure to exhibited artists.<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 70.</ref> Bouguereau's fame extended to England by the 1860s.<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 14.</ref> Three paintings were shown at the 1863 Salon and ''[http://cm.chimeimuseum.org/wSite/ct?ctNode=307&mp=chimei&xItem=25657 Holy Family]'' (Now at [[Chimei Museum]]) was sold to Napoleon III, who presented it to his wife the Empress Eugénie, who hung it in her Tuileries apartment.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
== Reviews ==
* Albert Boime: ''The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century'' (London, 1971).
* Aleska Celebonovic: ''Peinture kitsch ou réalisme bourgeois, l'art pompier dans le monde''. Paris: Seghers, 1974.
* ''Art Pompier: Anti-Impressionism.'' New York: The Emily Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University, 1974.
* Mario Amaya (Forward), Robert Isaacson (catalogue and selection): ''William Adolphe Bouguereau''. New York: New York Cultural Center, 1974.
* John Russell: ''Art: Cultural Center Honors Bouguereau''. In [[New York Times]], 1974.
* [[Louise d 'Argencourt]] and Douglas Druick: ''The Other Nineteenth Century''. Ottawa: The National Gallery of Canada, 1978.
* James Harding: ''Les peintres pompiers''. Paris: Flammarion, 1980.
* "The Bouguereau Market". ''The Art newsletter''. January 6, 1981. pp. 6-8.
* Louise d'Argencourt and Mark Steven Walker: ''William Bouguereau''. Montreal, Canada: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1984.
* Robert and H. W. Jason Rosenblums: ''19th Century Art''. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984.
* Michael Gibson: ''Bouguereau's "Photo-Idealism".'' In [[International Herald Tribune]], 1984.
* Grace Glueck: ''[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9406E4D81F38F935A35752C0A963948260&sec=&spon= To Bouguereau, Art Was Strictly "The Beautiful.]'' In The New York Times, 1985.
* Cécile Ritzenthaler: ''L'école des beaux art du XIXe siècle''. édition Mayer, 1987
* Exhibition catalogue ''William Adolphe Bouguereau, L'Art Pompier''. Borghi & Co., New York, 1991.


[[File:Bouguereau - Baigneuse.jpg|thumb|''The Bather'' (1864)]]
== See also ==
''Bather'' (1864), a shocking nude, was submitted to an exhibition in [[Ghent]], Belgium. It was a spectacular success and purchased by the museum at great expense. At this time, William took on decorative work at the Grand Théâtre, Bordeaux, which lasted four years. In 1875, with assistants, he began work on a La Rochelle chapel ceiling, producing six paintings on copper over the next six years. Once installed in the city in summer 1875 he began ''[[Pieta (Bouguereau)|Pietà]]'', one of his greatest religious paintings and shown at the 1876 Salon, in tribute to his son Georges. At the behest of King [[William III of the Netherlands]], Bouguereau went to [[Het Loo Palace]] in May 1876. The king admired the artist and they spent intimate times together.{{What|date=December 2022}} In May 1878 the Paris Universal Exhibition opened to showcase French work. Bouguereau found and borrowed twelve of his paintings from their owners, including his new work ''Nymphaeum''.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
;Articles on individual paintings:

* ''[[La Danse]]'' (1850)
Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose [[Genre works|genre paintings]] and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects, both pagan and Christian, with a concentration on the naked female form. The idealized world of his paintings brought to life goddesses, [[nymph]]s, bathers, shepherdesses, and madonnas in a way that appealed to wealthy art patrons of the era.
* ''[[Alone in the World]]'' (Latest 1867)

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.<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 112.</ref> He also used some of the religious and erotic symbolism of the Old Masters, such as the "broken pitcher" which connoted lost innocence.<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 60.</ref>

Bouguereau received many commissions to decorate private houses and public buildings, and, early on, this added to his prestige and fame. As was typical of such commissions, he would sometimes paint in his own style, and at other times conform to an existing group style. He also made reductions of his public paintings for sale to patrons, of which ''The Annunciation'' (1888) is an example.<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 31.</ref> He was also a successful portrait painter and many of his paintings of wealthy patrons remain in private hands.<ref name="wssman-103">Wissman 1996, p. 103.</ref>

===Académie Julian===
From the 1860s, Bouguereau was closely associated with the {{Lang|fr|[[Académie Julian]]|italic=no}} where he gave lessons and advice to art students, male and female, from around the world. During several decades he taught drawing and painting to hundreds, if not thousands, of students. Many of them managed to establish artistic careers in their own countries, sometimes following his academic style, and in other cases, rebelling against it, like [[Henri Matisse]]. He married his most famous pupil, [[Elizabeth Jane Gardner]], after the death of his first wife.

Bouguereau received many honors from the Academy: he became a Life Member in 1876; received the Grand Medal of Honour in 1885;<ref name="Wissman 1996, p. 16">Wissman 1996, p. 16.</ref> was appointed Commander of the [[Legion of Honour|Legion of Honor]] in 1885; and was made Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour in 1905.<ref name="Léonore">[http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/leonore_fr?ACTION=CHERCHER&FIELD_1=NOM&VALUE_1=BOUGUEREAU Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Base Léonore, Archives Nationales]</ref> He began to teach drawing at the {{Lang|fr|Académie Julian|italic=no}}<ref name="ARLVAF">{{cite book |title=Artistic Relations: Literature and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-century France |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b6BgRGJO3KYC |first1=Peter |last1=Collier |first2=Robert |last2=Lethbridge |publisher=Yale University Press |location=London |year=1994 |page=50 |isbn=9780300060096}}</ref> in 1875, a co-ed art institution independent of the {{Lang|fr|[[École des Beaux-Arts]]|italic=no}}, with no entrance exams and nominal fees.<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 110.</ref>

===Wives and children===
[[File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Portrait de Mademoiselle Elizabeth Gardner (1879).jpg|thumb|Portrait by Bouguereau of his wife [[Elizabeth Jane Gardner]], [[Chimei Museum]], Tainan, Taiwan]]

In 1856, William began living with one of his models, Nelly Monchablon, a 19-year-old from [[Lisle-en-Rigault]]. Living together unmarried, the pair kept their liaison a secret. Their first child, Henriette, was born in April 1857; Georges was born in January 1859. A third child, Jeanne, was born 25 December 1861. The couple married quietly (as many assumed they were already married) on 24 May 1866. Eight days later, Jeanne died from [[tuberculosis]]. In mourning, the couple went to La Rochelle, and Bouguereau made a painting of her in 1868. A fourth child, Adolphe (known as Paul), was born in October 1868. Aged 15, Georges' health suffered, and his mother took him away from the bad air of Paris. However, he died on 19 June 1875. Nelly had a fifth child in 1876, Maurice, but her health was declining and the doctors suspected that she had contracted tuberculosis. She died on 3 April 1877, and baby Maurice died two months later.<ref name="Wissman 1996, p. 15">Wissman 1996, p. 15.</ref>

The artist planned to marry [[Elizabeth Jane Gardner]], a pupil whom he had known for ten years, but his mother was opposed to the idea. Soon after Nelly's death, she made Bouguereau swear he would not remarry within her lifetime. After his mother's death, and after a nineteen-year engagement, he and Gardner married in Paris in June 1896.<ref name="Wissman 1996, p. 15"/> His wife continued to work as his private secretary, and helped to organize the household staff. His son Paul contracted tuberculosis in early 1899; Paul, his stepmother, and Bouguereau went to [[Menton]] in the south. When the stay was prolonged, the artist found a room in which to paint. Paul died at his father's house in April 1900, aged 32; Bouguereau had outlived four of his five children, only Henriette outlived him. Elizabeth, who was with her husband to the end, died in Paris in January 1922.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

===Homes===
When Bouguereau arrived in Paris in March 1846, he resided at the Hotel Corneille at 5 rue Corneille. In 1855, after his stay in Rome, he lived at 27 rue de Fleurus, and the following year rented a fourth-floor studio at 3 rue Carnot, near his apartment. In 1866, the year of his marriage to Nelly, he bought a vast plot of land on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and an architect was commissioned to design a grand house with a top-floor studio. The family was installed in 1868, together with five servants and with his mother, Adeline, visiting daily. Bouguereau spent the rest of his life here and at La Rochelle.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

===Later years and death===
Bouguereau was an assiduous painter, often completing twenty or more easel paintings in a single year. Even during the twilight years of his life, he would rise at dawn to work on his paintings six days a week and would continue painting until nightfall.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Throughout the course of his lifetime, he is known to have painted at least 822 paintings. Many of these paintings have been lost.<ref name="ross"/> 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."<ref>Wissman 1996, p. 114.</ref>

In the spring of 1905, Bouguereau's house and studio in Paris were burgled. On 19 August 1905, aged 79, Bouguereau died in La Rochelle from heart disease. There was an outpouring of grief in the town of his birth. After a Mass at the cathedral, his body was placed on a train to Paris for a second ceremony. Bouguereau was laid to rest with Nelly and his children at the family vault at [[Montparnasse Cemetery]].<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

==Notable works==
<gallery perrow="" widths="154" heights="254" caption="Depictions of women in classical themes">
File:L'Aurore by William-Adolphe Bouguereau - BMA.jpg|''[[L'Aurore (Bouguereau)|L'Aurore]]'' or ''Dawn'' (1881)
File:Bouguereau-Evening Mood 1882.jpg|''Soir'', ''Evening'' or ''Evening Mood'' (1882)
File:Psyche et LAmour.jpg|''Psyche et L'Amour'' (1889)
File:Psycheabduct.jpg|''[[Psyche (mythology)|The Abduction of Psyche]]'' (1895)
File:Bouguereau-Linnocence.jpg|''Innocence'' (1893)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Bacchante (1894).jpg|''Bacchante'' (1894)
</gallery>

<gallery perrow="" widths="154" heights="254" caption="Depictions of nude women">
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Bather (1870).jpg|''Baigneuse'' (1870)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - After the Bath (1875).jpg|''After the Bath'' (1875)
File:WilliamBouguereau-TheBather-(1879).jpg|''The Bather'' or ''Baigneuse'' (1879)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Les Deux Baigneuses (1884).jpg|''Les Deux Baigneuses'' (1884)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Wave (1896).jpg|''The Wave'' (1896)
</gallery><gallery widths="254" heights="254" caption="'''Depictions of mythological scenes'''">
File:Enfant sur un monstre marin by William-Adolphe Bouguereau 1857.jpg|''Enfant sur un monstre marin'', 1857. Private collection.
File:Enfant sur un griffon by William-Adolphe Bouguereau 1857.jpg|''Enfant sur un griffon'', 1857. Private collection.
</gallery>

==Reputation==
[[File:The young shepherdess, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.jpg|thumb|upright|left|alt=|''[[The Young Shepherdess]]'' (1885)]]

In his own time, Bouguereau was considered to be one of the greatest painters in the world by the academic art community, and simultaneously he was reviled by the [[avant-garde]]. He also gained wide fame in [[Belgium]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Portugal]], [[Spain]], Italy, [[Romania]] and in the United States, and commanded high prices.<ref name="wssman-103"/> His works often sold within days of completion. Some were viewed by international collectors and bought before work had even finished.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

Bouguereau's career was nearly a direct ascent with hardly a setback.<ref name="wissman-9">Wissman 1996, p. 9.</ref> To many, he epitomized taste and refinement, and a respect for tradition. To others, he was a competent technician stuck in the past. [[Edgar Degas|Degas]] and his associates used the term "Bouguereauté" in a derogatory manner to describe any artistic style reliant on "slick and artificial surfaces",<ref name="wissman-9"/> also known as a [[licked finish]]. In an 1872 letter, Degas wrote that he strove to emulate Bouguereau's ordered and productive working style, although with Degas' famous trenchant wit, and the aesthetic tendencies of the Impressionists, it is possible the statement was meant to be ironic.<ref name="wssman-103"/> [[Paul Gauguin]] loathed him, rating him a round zero in ''Racontars de Rapin'' and later describing in ''Avant et après (Intimate Journals)'' the single occasion when Bouguereau made him smile on coming across a couple of his paintings in an Arles brothel, "where they belonged".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bertrand |first1=Anne |title=Gauguin le rapin: ""Racontars de rapin, suivi de Art de Papou & chant de Rossignoou"" et ""La lutte pour les peintres"" |url=http://www.liberation.fr/livres/1995/02/02/gauguin-le-rapin-racontars-de-rapin-suivi-de-art-de-papou-chant-de-rossignoou-et-la-lutte-pour-les-p_124875 |website=liberation.fr |date=2 February 1995 |publisher=[[Libération]] |language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{Google books |vEs3AQAAMAAJ |Intimate Journals |page=174 |plainurl= }}</ref>

Bouguereau's works were eagerly bought by American millionaires who considered him the most important French artist of that time.<ref name="wssman-103"/> For example, ''[[Nymphs and Satyr]]'' was purchased first by John Wolfe, then sold by his heiress Catharine Lorillard Wolfe to hotelier Edward Stokes, who displayed it in New York City's Hoffman House Hotel.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Jacolbe |first1=Jessica |title=The painting that changed New York |url=https://daily.jstor.org/the-painting-that-changed-new-york-city/ |website=JSTOR|date=12 March 2019 }}</ref> Two paintings by Bouguereau in the [[Nob Hill]] mansion of [[Leland Stanford]] were destroyed in the [[San Francisco earthquake]] and fire of 1906.<ref>Osborne, Carol M. ''Museum Builders in the West: The Stanfords as Collectors and Patrons of Art, 1870–1906''. Stanford University Museum of Art, 1986, p. 18.</ref> [[Gold Rush]] tycoon [[James Ben Ali Haggin]] and his family, who normally eschewed the nude, made an exception for Bouguereau's ''Nymphaeum''. In 1890 Bouguereau’s painting ''Return of Spring'' was damaged at a Foreign art exhibition of local artists in Omaha Nebraska. Carey J. Warbington, an accountant, threw a chair at the painting. After Warbington was convicted of insanity and eventually committed suicide. The picture after the incident still traveled the United States with the tare intact and the chair accompanied the painting also, wherever the painting was shown.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Trans-Mississippi and International Expositions of 1898-1899: art, anthropology, and popular culture at the Fin de Siècle |date=2018 |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-0-8032-7880-6 |editor-last=Katz |editor-first=Wendy Jean |location=Lincoln}}</ref>

However, even during his lifetime, there was critical dissent in assessing his work; the art historian [[Richard Muther (art historian)|Richard Muther]] wrote in 1894 that Bouguereau was a man "destitute of artistic feeling but possessing a cultured taste [who] reveals... in his feeble mawkishness, the fatal decline of the old schools of convention". In 1926, American art historian [[Frank Jewett Mather]] criticized the commercial intent of Bouguereau's work, writing that the artist "multiplied vague, pink effigies of nymphs, occasionally draped them, when they became saints and madonnas, painted on the great scale that dominates an exhibition, and has had his reward. I am convinced that the nude of Bouguereau was prearranged to meet the ideals of a New York stockbroker of the black walnut generation." Bouguereau confessed in 1891 that the direction of his mature work was largely a response to the marketplace: "What do you expect, you have to follow public taste, and the public only buys what it likes. That's why, with time, I changed my way of painting."<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KnFUALV5xEoC&pg=PA281 |title=Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-siècle Europe |isbn=0691029261 |last1=Jensen |first1=Robert |year=1996 |publisher=Princeton University Press }}</ref>

[[File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Nymphaeum (1878).jpg|thumb|350px| ''Nymphaeum'', 1878, [[Haggin Museum]]]]
Bouguereau fell into disrepute after 1920, due in part to changing tastes.<ref name="andrews"/> Comparing his work to that of his [[Realism (arts)|Realist]] and [[Impressionism|Impressionist]] contemporaries, [[Kenneth Clark]] faulted Bouguereau's painting for "[[wikt:lubricity|lubricity]]", and characterized such Salon art as superficial, employing the "convention of smoothed-out form and waxen surface".<ref>Clark, Kenneth. ''The Nude; A Study in Ideal Form'', 163–164. Princeton University Press, 1956. {{ISBN|0-691-01788-3}}</ref>

The [[New York Cultural Center]] staged a show of Bouguereau's work in 1974—partly as a curiosity, although curator [[Robert Isaacson]] had his eye on the long-term rehabilitation of Bouguereau's legacy and reputation.<ref name=Isaacson>I[[Robert Isaacson|Isaacson, Robert]]. ''William-Adolphe Bouguereau (catalogue)''. New York Cultural Center and Farleigh Dickinson, 1974.</ref> In 1984, the Borghi Gallery hosted a commercial show of 23 oil paintings and one drawing. In the same year, a major exhibition was organized by the [[Montreal Museum of Fine Arts]] in Canada. The exhibition opened at the [[Petit Palais|Musée du Petit-Palais]], in Paris, traveled to The [[Wadsworth Atheneum]] in Hartford, and concluded in Montréal. More recently, resurgence in the artist's popularity has been promoted by American collector Fred Ross, who owns a number of paintings by Bouguereau and features him on his website at [[Art Renewal Center]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nysun.com/arts/who-is-buying-all-those-bouguereaus/21771/ |title=Who Is Buying All Those Bouguereaus? |work=New York Sun|first=Carly|last=Berwick|date=20 October 2005|access-date=31 March 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.post-gazette.com/frontpage/2007/08/20/Gifted-artist-Bouguereau-s-work-controversial-more-than-a-century-after-his-death/stories/200708200191 |title=Gifted artist? Bouguereau's work controversial more than a century after his death |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette|first=Mark|last=Roth|date=20 August 2007|access-date=31 March 2022}}</ref>

In 2019, the Milwaukee Art Museum assembled more than 40 of Bouguereau's paintings for a major retrospective of his work, which according to ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]'', asked the readers to "see Bouguereau through the eyes of an age when he was lionized, and Impressionism was dismissed as 'French freedom'".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Gibson |first1=Eric |title=Re-Examining A Reviled Master |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/bouguereau-america-review-re-examining-a-reviled-master-11551130628?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1 |access-date=26 February 2019 |newspaper=The Wall Street Journal |date=26 February 2019}}</ref> The exhibition later was scheduled to travel to the [[Memphis Brooks Museum of Art]] in Memphis, Tenn., and then to the San Diego Museum of Art.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.sdmart.org/exhibition/bouguereau-america/|title=Bouguereau & America at The San Diego Museum of Art|website=San Diego Museum of Art}}</ref>

Prices for Bouguereau's works have climbed steadily since 1975, with major paintings selling at high prices: $1.5&nbsp;million in 1998 for ''[[:File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Leveil du coeur (1892).jpg|The Heart's Awakening]]'', $2.6&nbsp;million in 1999 for ''[[:File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Motherland (1883).jpg|The Motherland]]'' and ''Charity'' at auction in May 2000 for $3.5&nbsp;million. Bouguereau's works are in many public collections.

''Notre Dame des Anges'' ("Our Lady of the Angels") was last shown publicly in the United States at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. It was donated in 2002 to the Daughters of Mary Mother of Our Savior, an order of nuns affiliated with [[Clarence Kelly]]'s Traditionalist Catholic Society of St. Pius V. In 2009, the nuns sold it for $450,000 to an art dealer, who was able to sell it for more than $2&nbsp;million. Kelly was subsequently found guilty by a jury in [[Albany, New York]], of defaming the dealer in remarks made in a television interview.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.abqjournal.com/79877/gallery-owner-didnt-cheat-nuns.html|title=Gallery Owner Didn't Cheat Nuns|first=Mark Oswald &#124; Journal Staff|last=Writer|website=www.abqjournal.com}}</ref>
{{Clear}}

==Name==
[[Image:Bouguereau assinaturajpg.jpg|thumb|upright|Bouguereau's signature]]

{{cns|date=June 2022|text=Sources on his full name are contradictory: it is sometimes given as ''William-Adolphe Bouguereau'' (composed name), ''William Adolphe Bouguereau'' (usual and civil-only names according to the French tradition), while in other occasions it appears as ''Adolphe William Bouguereau'' (with Adolphe as the usual name). However, he used to sign his works simply as William Bouguereau (hinting "William" was his given name, whatever the order), or more precisely as ''"W.Bouguereau.date"'' (French alphabet) and later as ''"W-BOVGVEREAV-date"'' (Latin alphabet).}}

== Awards and honours ==
* 1848: Second {{lang|fr|[[Prix de Rome]]|italic=no}}, for ''Saint Pierre après sa délivrance de prison, vient retrouver les fidèles chez Marie''.
* 1850: Premier {{lang|fr|[[Prix de Rome]]|italic=no}}, for ''Zenobie retrouvée par les bergers sur les bords de l'Araxe''.
* 1859: Knight of the [[Legion of Honour]]<ref name="Léonore" />
* 1876: Officer of the Legion of Honour<ref name="Léonore" />
* 1881: Knight in the [[Order of Leopold (Belgium)|Order of Leopold]]<ref>Handelsblad (Het), 15 May 1881.</ref>
* 1885: Commander of the Legion of Honour<ref name="Léonore" />
* 1885: Grand Medal of Honour<ref name="Wissman 1996, p. 16"/>
* 1890: Member of the [[Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium]]<ref>Index biographique des membres et associés de l'Académie royale de Belgique (1769–2005).</ref>
* 1905: Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour<ref name="Léonore" />

==In literature==
In ''[[The King in Yellow]]'', by [[Robert W. Chambers]], he is mentioned in various tales as a teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts.

In Sir [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]'s novel ''[[The Sign of the Four]]'' (1890), the character Mr Sholto remarks, "there cannot be the least question about the Bouguereau. I am partial to the modern French school."<ref name="Doyle2011">{{cite book |last=Doyle |first=Arthur Conan |title=Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four (Sherlock Complete Set 2) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DpsOmHH3vGkC&pg=PT17 |year=2011 |orig-year=1890 |publisher=Headline |isbn=978-0-7553-8765-6 |page=17}}</ref>

==Selected works==
[[File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Not Too Much To Carry (1895).jpg|thumb|''Pleasant Burden'' (1895)]]
[[Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Seamstress (1898).jpg|thumb|upright|alt=|''Sewing'' (1898)]]
* ''[[La Danse (Bouguereau)|La Danse]]'' (1856)
* ''Bather'' (1864)
* ''Loin du Pays (painting and two reductions) Far From Home'' (1867)
* ''[[Alone in the World (painting)|Alone in the World]]'' (Latest 1867)
* ''[[The Knitting Girl]]'' (1869)
* ''[[The Knitting Girl]]'' (1869)
* ''[[The Elder Sister]]'' (1869)
* ''Italian Girl at the Fountain'' (1870)
* ''Baigneuse'' (1870)
* ''[[Nymphs and Satyr]]'' (1873)
* ''[[Nymphs and Satyr]]'' (1873)
* ''[[Cupidon (1875)|Cupidon]]'' (1875)
* ''Homer and his Guide'' (1874)
* ''At the Edge of the River'' (1875)
* ''[[Flora and Zephyr (Bouguereau)|Flora and Zephyr]]'' (1875)
* ''The Grape Picker'' (1875)
* ''The Little Knitter'' (1875)
* ''La Jeunesse et l'Amour'' (1877)
* ''The Donkey Ride'' (1878)
* ''[[The Birth of Venus (Bouguereau)|The Birth of Venus]]'' (1879)
* ''[[The Birth of Venus (Bouguereau)|The Birth of Venus]]'' (1879)
* ''Girl Defending herself against Cupid'' (1880)
* ''[[Song of the Angels]]'' (1881)
* ''[[Evening Mood]]'' (1882)
* ''[[Evening Mood]]'' (1882)
* ''[[The Nut Gatherers]]'' (1882)
* ''[[The Nut Gatherers]]'' (1882)
* ''[[Le Printemps (The Return of Spring)]]'' (1886)
* ''Alma Parens of Mother France'' (1883)
* ''[[The Shepherdess (1889)|The Shepherdess]]'' (1889)
* ''The Youth of Bacchus'' (1884)
* ''Biblis'' (1884)
* ''[[The Return of Spring]]'' (1886)
* ''Woman with Captive Cupid'' (1886)
* ''[[The First Mourning]]'' (1888)
* ''[[The Shepherdess]]'' (1889)
* ''[[Les murmures de l'Amour]]'' (1889)
* ''[[Gabrielle Cot]]'', a portrait of Cot's daughter, 1890
* ''[[L'Amour et Psyché, enfants]]'' (1890)
* ''[[L'Amour et Psyché, enfants]]'' (1890)
* ''[[The Bohemian]]'' (1890)
* ''[[The Bohemian (Bouguereau painting)|The Bohemian]]'' (1890)
* ''[[The Young Shepherdess]]'' (1895)
* ''Little Beggars'' (1890)
* ''[[Le Travail interrompu]]'' (1891)
;Other:
* ''[[The Goose Girl (painting)|The Goose Girl]]'' (1891)
* [[Art nouveau]]
* ''The Wasps Nest'' (1892)

* ''Innocence'' (1893)
== External links ==
* ''Pleasant Burden'' (1895)

* ''The Ravishment of Psyche'' (1895)
{{Commons+cat|William-Adolphe Bouguereau}}
* ''The Wave'' (1896)
{{wikiquote|William-Adolphe Bouguereau}}
* ''Admiration'' (1897)
* [http://www.artrenewal.org/museum/b/Bouguereau_William/bio1.asp Biography of William Bouguereau] at the [[Art Renewal Center]]
* ''[[La Vierge au lys]]'' (1899)
* {{ARC artist|7}}
* ''[[Rêve de printemps]]'' (1901)
* [http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bouguereau/ Web Museum]
* ''Yvonne on the Doorstep'' (1901)
* [http://www.clarkart.edu/museum_programs/featuredObjectDetail.cfm?ID=15&nav=3# Nymphs and Satyr]
* ''[[The Oreads]]'' (1902)
* [http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=19 Bouguereau Gallery at MuseumSyndicate]
* ''Oceanid'' (1904)
* [http://library.getty.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=bouguereau&Search_Code=GETG%5E&SL=None&PID=YMjQfj2K-XoVMDjwe8NkamZ6TfsV&SEQ=20070816060801&CNT=50&HIST=1&SEARCH_FROM_TITLES_PAGE=Y Getty Research Institute material, including letters]
* ''In The Woods'' (1905)
:''[https://www.bouguereau.org/the-complete-works.html Source]''


==Gallery==
==Gallery==
{{commons}}
=== 1850s ===
<!--Please do not add additional images per the talk page discussion. Thank you.-->
<gallery>
<gallery widths="170" heights="170">
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Dante And Virgil In Hell (1850).jpg|Dante And Virgil In Hell (1850)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Portrait of Amelina Dufaud Bouguereau (1850).jpg|A Portrait of Amelina Dufaud Bouguereau (1850)
File:William Bouguereau - Dante and Virgile - Google Art Project 2.jpg|''[[Dante and Virgil|Dante and Virgil in Hell]]'' (1850)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Portrait of Eugène Bouguereau (1850).jpg|A Portrait of Eugène Bouguereau (1850)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Fraternal Love (1851).png|''Fraternal Love'' (1851)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Portrait of Geneviève Bouguereau (1850).jpg|A Portrait of Geneviève Bouguereau (1850)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Day of the Dead (1859).jpg|''The Day of the Dead'' (1859)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Portrait of Léonie Bouguereau (1850).jpg|A Portrait of Léonie Bouguereau (1850)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Charity (1859).jpg|''Charity'' (1859)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Portrait of Monsieur M. (1850).png|Portrait of Monsieur M. (1850)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Maternal Admiration (1869).jpg|''[[Maternal Admiration]]'' (1869)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Fraternal Love (1851).png|Fraternal Love (1851)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Haymaker (1869).jpg|''The Haymaker'' (1869)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Arion on a Sea Horse (1855).jpg|Arion on a Sea Horse (1855)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau, "Italian Mandolin".jpg|''Italian Mandolin'' (1870)
File:Breton Brother and Sister MET DT2566.jpg|''[[Breton Brother and Sister]]'' (1871)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Bacchante on a Panther (1855).jpg|Bacchante on a Panther (1855)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Dance (1856).jpg|[[La Danse|The Dance]] (1856)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Italian Girl Drawing Water (1871).jpg|''Italian Girl Drawing Water'' (1871)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Charity (1859).jpg|Charity (1859)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Charity (1878).jpg|''Charity'' (1878)
File:Les Enfants à L'Agneau by William Adolphe Bouguereau.jpg|''Les Enfants à L'Agneau'' (1879)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Day of the Dead (1859).jpg|The Day of the Dead (1859)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros (1880).jpg|''A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros'' (1880)
File:William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1825-1905)_-_The_Flagellation_of_Our_Lord_Jesus_Christ_(1880).jpg|''The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ'' (1880)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Song of the Angels (1881).jpg|''[[La Vierge aux anges|Song of the Angels]]'' (1881)
File:William Adolphe Bouguereau, Fishing For Frogs, 1882. Oil on canvas.jpg|''Fishing For Frogs'' (1882)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Biblis (1884).jpg|''[[Byblis|Biblis]]'' (1884)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Seated Nude (1884).jpg|''Seated Nude'' (1884)
File:William Bouguereau - El primer duelo.jpg|''[[The First Mourning]]'' (1888)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau - Les murmures de l'Amour (1889).jpg|''[[Les murmures de l'Amour]]'' (1889)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Shepherdess (1889).jpg|''[[The Shepherdess]]'' (1889)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Bohemian (1890).jpg|''[[The Bohemian (Bouguereau)|The Bohemian]]'' (1890)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau - Gabrielle Cot - Sotheby's.jpg|''[[Gabrielle Cot]], daughter of [[Pierre Auguste Cot]]'' (1890)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Little Coaxing (1890).jpg|''[[A Little Coaxing (Bouguereau)|A Little Coaxing]]'' (1890)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1892 - Le Guêpier.jpg|''The Invasion'' (1892)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Daisies (1894).jpg|''Daisies'' (1894)
File:The Shepherdess by William Adolphe Bouguereau.jpg|''The Shepherdess'' (1895)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Inspiration (1898).jpg|''Inspiration'' (1898)
File:La Vierge au lys.jpg|''[[La Vierge au lys]]'' ''(The Virgin of the Lilies'') (1899)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau The Virgin With Angels.jpg|''[[Regina Angelorum (Bouguereau)|Queen of the Angels]]'' (1900)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Before The Bath (1900).jpg|''Before The Bath'' (1900)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Two Sisters (1901).jpg|''Two Sisters'' (1901)
</gallery>
</gallery>


=== 1860s ===
==See also==
* [[Gustave Doyen]]
<gallery>
* [[Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema]]
Image:William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1825-1905)_-_Tobias_Saying_Good-Bye_to_his_Father_(1860).png|Tobias Saying Good-Bye to his Father (1860)
*[[The Broken Pitcher (Painting)]]
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Young Woman Contemplating Two Embracing Children (1861).jpg|Young Woman Contemplating Two Embracing Children (1861)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Remorse of Orestes (1862).jpg|The Remorse of Orestes (1862)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Prayer (1865).jpg|The Prayer (1865)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Soup (1865).jpg|Soup (1865)
Image:William A. Bouguereau -Premières Caresses - 1866.jpg|Premières Caresses (1866)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Gypsy Girl with a Basque Drum (1867).jpg|Gypsy Girl with a Basque Drum (1867)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Tête d'Etude l'Oiseau (1867).jpg|Tête d'Etude l'Oiseau (1867)
Image:William A. Bouguereau - Yvonnette - 1867.jpg|Yvonnette (1867)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Bunch Of Grapes (1868).jpg|The Bunch Of Grapes (1868)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Young Shepherdess (1868).jpg|Young Shepherdess (1868)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Elder Sister (1869).png|The Elder Sister (1869)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Haymaker (1869).jpg|The Haymaker (1869)
Image:The Knitting Woman painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.jpg|[[The Knitting Girl]] (1869)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Maternal Admiration (1869).jpg|Maternal Admiration (1869)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Washerwomen of Fouesnant (1869).png|Washerwomen of Fouesnant (1869)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Young Worker (1869).jpg|Young Worker (1869)
Image:Bouguereau_Seule-au-monde.jpg | [[Alone in the World|Seule au monde]] (before 1867)
</gallery>


=== 1870s ===
==References==
{{reflist|30em}}
<gallery>
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Bather (1870).jpg|Bather (1870)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Breton Brother and Sister (1871).jpg|Breton Brother and Sister (1871)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Italian Girl Drawing Water (1871).jpg|Italian Girl Drawing Water (1871)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Young Mother Gazing At Her Child (1871).jpg|Young Mother Gazing At Her Child (1871)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Pendant l'Orage (1872).jpg|Pendant l'Orage (1872)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Proposal (1872).jpg|The Proposal (1872)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Nymphs and Satyr (1873).jpg|[[Nymphs and Satyr]] (1873)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Spinner (1873).jpg|The Spinner (1873)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Child Braiding A Crown (1874).jpg|Child Braiding A Crown (1874)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Homer and his Guide (1874).jpg|Homer and his Guide (1874)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - After the Bath (1875).jpg|After the Bath (1875)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - At the Edge of the Brook (1875).jpg|At the Edge of the Brook (1875)
Image:Cupidon.jpg|[[Cupidon (1875)|Cupidon]] (1875)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Flora And Zephyr (1875).jpg|Flora And Zephyr (1875)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Lullaby (1875).jpg|Lullaby (1875)
Image:1875 Bouguereau-Vierge-Jésus-SaintJeanBaptiste.jpg|The Virgin, Jesus & Saint John Baptist (1875)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Charity (1878).jpg|Charity (1878)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Nymphaeum (1878).jpg|The Nymphaeum (1878)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Return from the Harvest (1878).jpg|Return from the Harvest (1878)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - At the Edge of the Brook (1879).jpg|At the Edge of the Brook (1879)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Birth of Venus (1879).jpg|[[The Birth of Venus (Bouguereau)|The Birth of Venus]] (1879)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Rest (1879).jpg|Rest (1879)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Young Gypsies (1879).jpg|Young Gypsies (1879)
Image:William A. Bouguereau - La Frileuse - 1879.jpg|La Frileuse (1879)
Image:William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1825-1905)_-_Tricoteuse_(1879).jpg|Tricoteuse (1879)
Image:William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1825-1905) - Portrait de Mademoiselle Elizabeth Gardner (1879).jpg|Mademoiselle Elizabeth Gardner (1879)
Image:WilliamBouguereau-TheBather-(1879).jpg|The Bather (1879)
</gallery>


=== 1880s ===
==Further reading==
{{refbegin}}
<gallery>
* {{cite book |last=Boime |first=Albert |author-link=Albert Boime |title=Art Pompier: Anti-Impressionism |publisher=Hofstra University Press |location=New York |year=1974 }}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ (1880).jpg|The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ (1880)
* {{cite book |last=Boime |first=Albert |title=The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |year=1986 |isbn=978-0300037326}}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Temptation (1880).png|Temptation (1880)
* Bouguereau, William-Adolphe (1885). [https://archive.org/details/catalogueillustr00boug/page/n7/mode/2up Catalogue illustré des œuvres de W. Bouguereau], Paris: L. Baschet.
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros (1880).jpg|A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros (1880)
* {{cite book |last=Celebonovic |first=Aleska |title=Peinture kitsch ou réalisme bourgeois, l'art pompier dans le monde |publisher=Seghers |location=Paris |year=1974 }}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Dawn (1881).jpg|Dawn (1881)
* {{cite book |last=D'Argencourt |first=Louise |title=The Other Nineteenth Century |publisher=National Gallery of Canada |edition=First |location=Ottawa |year=1981 |isbn=978-0888843487}}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Day (1881).jpg|Day (1881)
* {{cite book |last1=D'Argencourt |first1=Louise |last2=Walker |first2=Mark Steven |title=William Bouguereau 1925–1905 |publisher=Montreal Museum of Fine Arts |location=Montreal |year=1984 }}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Shepherdess (1881).jpg|The Shepherdess (1881)
* {{cite news |last=Gibson |first=Michael |title=Bouguereau's 'Photo-Idealism' |work=International Herald Tribune |year=1984 }}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Song of the Angels (1881).jpg|Song of the Angels (1881)
* {{cite web |last=Glueck |first=Grace |title=To Bouguereau, Art Was Strictly 'The Beautiful' |work=The New York Times |date=6 January 1985 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/06/arts/art-view-to-bouguereau-art-was-strickly-the-beautiful.html |access-date=27 January 2013}}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Evening Mood (1882).jpg|[[Evening Mood]](1882)
* {{cite book |last=Harding |first=James |title=Les peintres pompiers |publisher=Flammarion |location=Paris |year=1980 }}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Little Knitter (1882).jpg|The Little Knitter (1882)
* {{cite book |last=Isaacson |first=Robert |title=William Adolphe Bouguereau |publisher=New York Cultural Center |location=New York |year=1974 }}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Nut Gatherers (1882).jpg|[[The Nut Gatherers]] (1882)
* {{cite book |last=Lécharny |first=Louis-Marie |title=L'Art-Pompier |publisher=Presses Universitaires de France |location=Paris |year=1998 |isbn=978-2130493419}}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Motherland (1883).jpg|The Motherland (1883)
* {{cite book |last=Ritzenthaler |first=Cécile |title=L'école des beaux art du XIXe siècle |publisher=Editions Mayer |location=Paris |year=1987 |isbn=978-2852990029}}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - La Nuit (1883).jpg|La Nuit (1883)
* {{cite book |last1=Rosenblum |first1=Robert |last2=Janson |first2=H.W. |title=19th Century Art |edition=Second |publisher=Pearson |location=New York |year=2004 |isbn=978-0131895621}}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Biblis (1884).jpg|Biblis (1884)
* {{cite news |last=Russell |first=John |title=Art: Cultural Center Honors Bouguereau |work=The New York Times |date=23 December 1974 }}
Image:Crown.jpg|Crown of Flowers (1884)
* {{cite news |title=The Bouguereau Market |work=The Arte newsletter |pages=6–8 |date=6 January 1981 }}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Difficult Lesson (1884).jpg|The Difficult Lesson (1884)
{{refend}}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Horseback Ride (1884).jpg|The Horseback Ride (1884)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Seated Nude (1884).jpg|Seated Nude (1884)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Lost Pleiad (1884).jpg|Lost Pleiad (1884)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Youth of Bacchus (1884).jpg|The Youth of Bacchus (1884)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Love's Resistance (1885).png|Love's Resistance (1885)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Young Girl Going to the Spring (1885).jpg|Young Girl Going to the Spring (1885)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Young Shepherdess (1885).jpg|The Young Shepherdess (1885)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Big Sis' (1886).jpg|Big Sis' (1886)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Return of Spring (1886).jpg|[[w:Le Printemps (The Return of Spring)|Return of Spring (1886)]]
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Self-Portrait Presented To M. Sage (1886).jpg|Self-Portrait Presented To M. Sage (1886)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Thirst (1886).jpg|Thirst (1886)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Brother And Sister (1887).jpg|Brother And Sister (1887)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Young Shepherdess Standing (1887).jpg|Young Shepherdess Standing (1887)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Study - Head Of A Little Girl (1888).jpg|Study: Head Of A Little Girl (1888)
Image:Kiss (1873).jpg|[[L'Amour et Psyché, enfants]] (1889)
Image:Little-shep.jpg|The Little Shepherdess (1889)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Shepherdess (1889).jpg|[[The Shepherdess (1889)|The Shepherdess]] (1889)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Whisperings of Love (1889).jpg|Whisperings of Love (1889)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Young Girl Crocheting (1889).jpg|Young Girl Crocheting (1889)
</gallery>


=== 1890s ===
==External links==
{{Commons and category}}
<gallery>
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Bohemian (1890).jpg|[[The Bohemian]] (1890)
{{wikiquote|William-Adolphe Bouguereau}}
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Little Coaxing (1890).jpg|A Little Coaxing (1890)
* [http://www.bouguereau.org William-Adolphe Bouguereau: The Complete Works]
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Love on the Look Out (1890).jpg|Love on the Look Out (1890)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Broken Pitcher (1891).jpg|The Broken Pitcher (1891)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Goose Girl (1891).jpg|The Goose Girl (1891)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Work Interrupted (1891).jpg|Work Interrupted (1891)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Invation (1893).jpg|The Invasion (1893)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Youth (1893).jpg|Youth (1893)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - After the Bath (1894).jpg|After the Bath (1894)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Bacchante (1894).jpg|Bacchante (1894)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Daisies (1894).jpg|Daisies (1894)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Palm Leaf (Unknown).jpg|The Palm Leaf (1894)
Image:Psycheabduct.jpg|The Abduction of [[Cupid and Psyche|Psyche]] (1895)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - In Penitence (1895).jpg|In Penitence (1895)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Not Too Much To Carry (1895).jpg|Not Too Much To Carry (1895)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Song of the Nightingale (1895).jpg|The Song of the Nightingale (1895)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Spring Breeze (1895).jpg|Spring Breeze (1895)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Calling (1896).jpg|A Calling (1896)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - At The Fountain (1897).jpg|At The Fountain (1897)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Compassion (1897).jpg|Compassion (1897)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Irène (1897).jpg|Irène (1897)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Curtsey (1898).jpg|The Curtsey (1898)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Head Of A Young Girl (1898).jpg|Head Of A Young Girl (1898)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Inspiration (1898).jpg|Inspiration (1898)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Sewing (1898).jpg|Sewing (1898)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Elegy (1899).jpg|Elegy (1899)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Girl Holding Lemons (1899).jpg|Girl Holding Lemons (1899)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Mailice (1899).jpg|Mailice (1899)
</gallery>

=== [[w:1900s|1900s]] ===
<gallery>
Image:Bouguereau The Virgin With Angels.jpg|The Virgin With Angels (1900)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Laurel Branch (1900).jpg|Laurel Branch (1900)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Before The Bath (1900).jpg|Before The Bath (1900)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - A Childhood Idyll (1900).jpg|A Childhood Idyll (1900)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Two Sisters (1901).jpg|Two Sisters (1901)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Young Priestess (1902).jpg|Young Priestess (1902)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Madonna of the Roses (1903).jpg|The Madonna of the Roses (1903)
Image:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Far Niente (1904).jpg|Far Niente (1904)
</gallery>


{{William-Adolphe Bouguereau|state=expanded}}
<!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]] -->
{{ACArt}}


{{Persondata
|NAME=Bouguereau, William-Adolphe
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
|SHORT DESCRIPTION=French academic painter
|DATE OF BIRTH=[[1825-11-30]]
|PLACE OF BIRTH=[[La Rochelle]], [[France]]
|DATE OF DEATH=[[1905-08-19]]
|PLACE OF DEATH=[[La Rochelle]], [[France]]
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bouguereau, William-Adolphe}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bouguereau, William-Adolphe}}
[[Category:1825 births]]
[[Category:1825 births]]
[[Category:1905 deaths]]
[[Category:1905 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Poitou-Charentes]]
[[Category:19th-century French male artists]]
[[Category:French painters]]
[[Category:19th-century French painters]]
[[Category:Prix de Rome winners]]
[[Category:20th-century French male artists]]
[[Category:20th-century French painters]]

[[Category:Academic art]]
[[br:William Adolphe Bouguereau]]
[[Category:Academic staff of the Académie Julian]]
[[de:William Adolphe Bouguereau]]
[[Category:Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery]]
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[[Category:École des Beaux-Arts alumni]]
[[fa:ویلیام-آدولف بوگرو]]
[[Category:French male painters]]
[[fr:William Bouguereau]]
[[Category:French Realist painters]]
[[it:William-Adolphe Bouguereau]]
[[Category:French Roman Catholics]]
[[he:ויליאם אדולף בוגרו]]
[[Category:Grand Officers of the Legion of Honour]]
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[[Category:Members of the Royal Academy of Belgium]]
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[[Category:French Orientalist painters]]
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[[Category:People from La Rochelle]]
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[[Category:Pont-Aven painters]]
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Latest revision as of 22:52, 8 October 2024

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Born(1825-11-30)30 November 1825
La Rochelle, France
Died19 August 1905(1905-08-19) (aged 79)
La Rochelle, France
Known forPainter
Notable work
MovementRealism, Academic art
Spouses
Nelly Monchablon
(m. 1866; died 1877)
(m. 1896)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French pronunciation: [wiljam adɔlf buɡ(ə)ʁo]; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body.[1] During his life, he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work.[2] As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde.[2] By the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art fell out of favor with the public, due in part to changing tastes.[2] In the 1980s, a revival of interest in figure painting led to a rediscovery of Bouguereau and his work.[2] He finished 822 known paintings, but the whereabouts of many are still unknown.[3]

Life and career

[edit]

Formative years

[edit]
A portrait of Eugène Bouguereau (1850)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France, on 30 November 1825, into a family of wine and olive oil merchants.[4] The son of Théodore Bouguereau (born 1800) and Marie Bonnin (1804), known as Adeline, William was brought up a Catholic. He had an elder brother, Alfred, and a younger sister, Marie (known as Hanna), who died when she was seven. The family moved to Saint-Martin-de-Ré in 1832. Another sibling, Kitty, was born in 1834.[5] At the age of twelve, Bouguereau went to Mortagne-sur-Gironde to stay with his uncle Eugène, a priest, and developed a love of nature, religion, and literature.[6] In 1839, he was sent to study for the priesthood at a Catholic college in Pons. Here he learned to draw and paint from Louis Sage, who had studied under Ingres. Bouguereau then reluctantly left his studies to return to his family, now residing in Bordeaux. There he met a local artist, Charles Marionneau, and commenced at the Municipal School of Drawing and Painting in November 1841. Bouguereau also worked as a shop assistant, hand-colouring lithographs and making small paintings that were reproduced using chromolithography. He was soon the best pupil in his class and decided to become an artist in Paris. To fund the move, he sold portraits – 33 oils in three months. All were unsigned and only one has been traced.[5] In 1845, he returned to Mortagne to spend more time with his uncle.[6] He arrived in Paris in March 1846, aged twenty.[5]

Égalité devant la mort (Equality Before Death), 1848, oil on canvas, 141 × 269 cm (55.5 × 105.9 in), Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Equality is Bouguereau's first major painting, produced after two years at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris at the age of 23.[7]

Bouguereau became a student at the École des Beaux-Arts.[4] To supplement his formal training in drawing, he attended anatomical dissections and studied historical costumes and archeology. He was admitted to the studio of François-Édouard Picot, where he studied painting in the academic style. Dante and Virgil in Hell (1850) was an early example of his neo-classical works. Academic painting placed the highest status on historical and mythological subjects and Bouguereau determined to win the Prix de Rome, which would gain him a three-year residence at the Villa Medici in Rome, Italy, where, in addition taking formal lessons, he could study firsthand the Renaissance artists and their masterpieces, as well as Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities.[8]

Villa Medici, Rome 1851–1854

[edit]

The young artist entered the Prix de Rome contest in April 1848. Soon after work began there were riots in Paris, and Bouguereau enrolled in the National Guard. After an unsuccessful attempt to win the prize, he entered again in 1849. Following 106 days of competition, he again failed to win. His third attempt commenced unsuccessfully in April 1850 with Dante and Virgil but five months later, he heard he had won a joint first prize for Shepherds Find Zenobia on the Banks of the Araxes.[8]

Along with other category winners, he set off for Rome in December and finally arrived at the Villa Medici in January 1851. Bouguereau explored the city, making sketches and watercolours as he went. He also studied classical literature, which influenced his subject choice for the rest of his career.[8] He walked to Naples and on to Capri, Amalfi and Pompeii. Still based in Rome and working hard on course work, there were more explorations of Italy in 1852. Although he had a strong admiration for all traditional art, he particularly revered Greek sculpture, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens and Delacroix. In April 1854, he left Rome and returned to La Rochelle.[5]

Height of career

[edit]
Nymphs and Satyr, 1873, oil on canvas, 260 × 180 cm (102.4 × 70.9 in), Clark Art Institute

Bouguereau, painting within 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."[9]

Raphael was a favourite 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 an 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.[10] Bouguereau's graceful portraits of women were considered very charming, partly because he could beautify a sitter while also retaining her likeness.

Although Bouguereau spent most of his life in Paris, he returned to La Rochelle again and again throughout his professional life. He was revered in the town of his birth and undertook decorating commissions from local citizens. From the early 1870s, he and his family spent every summer in La Rochelle. In 1882, he decided that rather than rent he would purchase a house, as well as local farm buildings. By August of that year, the family's permanent summer base was on the rue Verdière. The artist commenced several paintings here and completed them in his Paris studio.[5]

The Holy Family (1863)

Bouguereau flourished after his Villa Medici residence. In 1854–55 he decorated a pavilion at the grand house of a cousin in Angoulins, including four large paintings of figures depicting the seasons. He was happy to undertake other commissions to pay off the debts accrued in Italy and to help his penniless mother. He decorated a mansion with nine large paintings of allegorical figures. In 1856, the Ministry of State for Fine Arts commissioned him to paint Emperor Napoleon III Visiting the Victims of the Tarascon Flood. There were decorations for the chapel at Saint-Clotilde. He received the Legion of Honour on 12 July 1859. By this time, Bouguereau was turning away from history painting and lengthy commissions to work on more personal paintings, with realistic and rustic themes.[5]

By the late 1850s, he had 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.[11] Thanks to Durand-Ruel, Bouguereau met Hugues Merle, who later often was compared to Bouguereau. The Salons annually drew over 300,000 people, providing valuable exposure to exhibited artists.[12] Bouguereau's fame extended to England by the 1860s.[13] Three paintings were shown at the 1863 Salon and Holy Family (Now at Chimei Museum) was sold to Napoleon III, who presented it to his wife the Empress Eugénie, who hung it in her Tuileries apartment.[5]

The Bather (1864)

Bather (1864), a shocking nude, was submitted to an exhibition in Ghent, Belgium. It was a spectacular success and purchased by the museum at great expense. At this time, William took on decorative work at the Grand Théâtre, Bordeaux, which lasted four years. In 1875, with assistants, he began work on a La Rochelle chapel ceiling, producing six paintings on copper over the next six years. Once installed in the city in summer 1875 he began Pietà, one of his greatest religious paintings and shown at the 1876 Salon, in tribute to his son Georges. At the behest of King William III of the Netherlands, Bouguereau went to Het Loo Palace in May 1876. The king admired the artist and they spent intimate times together.[clarification needed] In May 1878 the Paris Universal Exhibition opened to showcase French work. Bouguereau found and borrowed twelve of his paintings from their owners, including his new work Nymphaeum.[5]

Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects, both pagan and Christian, with a concentration on the naked female form. The idealized world of his paintings brought to life goddesses, nymphs, bathers, shepherdesses, and madonnas in a way that appealed to wealthy art patrons of the era.

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.[14] He also used some of the religious and erotic symbolism of the Old Masters, such as the "broken pitcher" which connoted lost innocence.[15]

Bouguereau received many commissions to decorate private houses and public buildings, and, early on, this added to his prestige and fame. As was typical of such commissions, he would sometimes paint in his own style, and at other times conform to an existing group style. He also made reductions of his public paintings for sale to patrons, of which The Annunciation (1888) is an example.[16] He was also a successful portrait painter and many of his paintings of wealthy patrons remain in private hands.[17]

Académie Julian

[edit]

From the 1860s, Bouguereau was closely associated with the Académie Julian where he gave lessons and advice to art students, male and female, from around the world. During several decades he taught drawing and painting to hundreds, if not thousands, of students. Many of them managed to establish artistic careers in their own countries, sometimes following his academic style, and in other cases, rebelling against it, like Henri Matisse. He married his most famous pupil, Elizabeth Jane Gardner, after the death of his first wife.

Bouguereau received many honors from the Academy: he became a Life Member in 1876; received the Grand Medal of Honour in 1885;[18] was appointed Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1885; and was made Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour in 1905.[19] He began to teach drawing at the Académie Julian[20] in 1875, a co-ed art institution independent of the École des Beaux-Arts, with no entrance exams and nominal fees.[21]

Wives and children

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Portrait by Bouguereau of his wife Elizabeth Jane Gardner, Chimei Museum, Tainan, Taiwan

In 1856, William began living with one of his models, Nelly Monchablon, a 19-year-old from Lisle-en-Rigault. Living together unmarried, the pair kept their liaison a secret. Their first child, Henriette, was born in April 1857; Georges was born in January 1859. A third child, Jeanne, was born 25 December 1861. The couple married quietly (as many assumed they were already married) on 24 May 1866. Eight days later, Jeanne died from tuberculosis. In mourning, the couple went to La Rochelle, and Bouguereau made a painting of her in 1868. A fourth child, Adolphe (known as Paul), was born in October 1868. Aged 15, Georges' health suffered, and his mother took him away from the bad air of Paris. However, he died on 19 June 1875. Nelly had a fifth child in 1876, Maurice, but her health was declining and the doctors suspected that she had contracted tuberculosis. She died on 3 April 1877, and baby Maurice died two months later.[22]

The artist planned to marry Elizabeth Jane Gardner, a pupil whom he had known for ten years, but his mother was opposed to the idea. Soon after Nelly's death, she made Bouguereau swear he would not remarry within her lifetime. After his mother's death, and after a nineteen-year engagement, he and Gardner married in Paris in June 1896.[22] His wife continued to work as his private secretary, and helped to organize the household staff. His son Paul contracted tuberculosis in early 1899; Paul, his stepmother, and Bouguereau went to Menton in the south. When the stay was prolonged, the artist found a room in which to paint. Paul died at his father's house in April 1900, aged 32; Bouguereau had outlived four of his five children, only Henriette outlived him. Elizabeth, who was with her husband to the end, died in Paris in January 1922.[5]

Homes

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When Bouguereau arrived in Paris in March 1846, he resided at the Hotel Corneille at 5 rue Corneille. In 1855, after his stay in Rome, he lived at 27 rue de Fleurus, and the following year rented a fourth-floor studio at 3 rue Carnot, near his apartment. In 1866, the year of his marriage to Nelly, he bought a vast plot of land on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and an architect was commissioned to design a grand house with a top-floor studio. The family was installed in 1868, together with five servants and with his mother, Adeline, visiting daily. Bouguereau spent the rest of his life here and at La Rochelle.[5]

Later years and death

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Bouguereau was an assiduous painter, often completing twenty or more easel paintings in a single year. Even during the twilight years of his life, he would rise at dawn to work on his paintings six days a week and would continue painting until nightfall.[5] Throughout the course of his lifetime, he is known to have painted at least 822 paintings. Many of these paintings have been lost.[3] 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."[23]

In the spring of 1905, Bouguereau's house and studio in Paris were burgled. On 19 August 1905, aged 79, Bouguereau died in La Rochelle from heart disease. There was an outpouring of grief in the town of his birth. After a Mass at the cathedral, his body was placed on a train to Paris for a second ceremony. Bouguereau was laid to rest with Nelly and his children at the family vault at Montparnasse Cemetery.[5]

Notable works

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Reputation

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The Young Shepherdess (1885)

In his own time, Bouguereau was considered to be one of the greatest painters in the world by the academic art community, and simultaneously he was reviled by the avant-garde. He also gained wide fame in Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Romania and in the United States, and commanded high prices.[17] His works often sold within days of completion. Some were viewed by international collectors and bought before work had even finished.[5]

Bouguereau's career was nearly a direct ascent with hardly a setback.[24] To many, he epitomized taste and refinement, and a respect for tradition. To others, he was a competent technician stuck in the past. Degas and his associates used the term "Bouguereauté" in a derogatory manner to describe any artistic style reliant on "slick and artificial surfaces",[24] also known as a licked finish. In an 1872 letter, Degas wrote that he strove to emulate Bouguereau's ordered and productive working style, although with Degas' famous trenchant wit, and the aesthetic tendencies of the Impressionists, it is possible the statement was meant to be ironic.[17] Paul Gauguin loathed him, rating him a round zero in Racontars de Rapin and later describing in Avant et après (Intimate Journals) the single occasion when Bouguereau made him smile on coming across a couple of his paintings in an Arles brothel, "where they belonged".[25][26]

Bouguereau's works were eagerly bought by American millionaires who considered him the most important French artist of that time.[17] For example, Nymphs and Satyr was purchased first by John Wolfe, then sold by his heiress Catharine Lorillard Wolfe to hotelier Edward Stokes, who displayed it in New York City's Hoffman House Hotel.[27] Two paintings by Bouguereau in the Nob Hill mansion of Leland Stanford were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.[28] Gold Rush tycoon James Ben Ali Haggin and his family, who normally eschewed the nude, made an exception for Bouguereau's Nymphaeum. In 1890 Bouguereau’s painting Return of Spring was damaged at a Foreign art exhibition of local artists in Omaha Nebraska. Carey J. Warbington, an accountant, threw a chair at the painting. After Warbington was convicted of insanity and eventually committed suicide. The picture after the incident still traveled the United States with the tare intact and the chair accompanied the painting also, wherever the painting was shown.[29]

However, even during his lifetime, there was critical dissent in assessing his work; the art historian Richard Muther wrote in 1894 that Bouguereau was a man "destitute of artistic feeling but possessing a cultured taste [who] reveals... in his feeble mawkishness, the fatal decline of the old schools of convention". In 1926, American art historian Frank Jewett Mather criticized the commercial intent of Bouguereau's work, writing that the artist "multiplied vague, pink effigies of nymphs, occasionally draped them, when they became saints and madonnas, painted on the great scale that dominates an exhibition, and has had his reward. I am convinced that the nude of Bouguereau was prearranged to meet the ideals of a New York stockbroker of the black walnut generation." Bouguereau confessed in 1891 that the direction of his mature work was largely a response to the marketplace: "What do you expect, you have to follow public taste, and the public only buys what it likes. That's why, with time, I changed my way of painting."[30]

Nymphaeum, 1878, Haggin Museum

Bouguereau fell into disrepute after 1920, due in part to changing tastes.[8] Comparing his work to that of his Realist and Impressionist contemporaries, Kenneth Clark faulted Bouguereau's painting for "lubricity", and characterized such Salon art as superficial, employing the "convention of smoothed-out form and waxen surface".[31]

The New York Cultural Center staged a show of Bouguereau's work in 1974—partly as a curiosity, although curator Robert Isaacson had his eye on the long-term rehabilitation of Bouguereau's legacy and reputation.[32] In 1984, the Borghi Gallery hosted a commercial show of 23 oil paintings and one drawing. In the same year, a major exhibition was organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada. The exhibition opened at the Musée du Petit-Palais, in Paris, traveled to The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, and concluded in Montréal. More recently, resurgence in the artist's popularity has been promoted by American collector Fred Ross, who owns a number of paintings by Bouguereau and features him on his website at Art Renewal Center.[33][34]

In 2019, the Milwaukee Art Museum assembled more than 40 of Bouguereau's paintings for a major retrospective of his work, which according to The Wall Street Journal, asked the readers to "see Bouguereau through the eyes of an age when he was lionized, and Impressionism was dismissed as 'French freedom'".[35] The exhibition later was scheduled to travel to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tenn., and then to the San Diego Museum of Art.[36]

Prices for Bouguereau's works have climbed steadily since 1975, with major paintings selling at high prices: $1.5 million in 1998 for The Heart's Awakening, $2.6 million in 1999 for The Motherland and Charity at auction in May 2000 for $3.5 million. Bouguereau's works are in many public collections.

Notre Dame des Anges ("Our Lady of the Angels") was last shown publicly in the United States at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. It was donated in 2002 to the Daughters of Mary Mother of Our Savior, an order of nuns affiliated with Clarence Kelly's Traditionalist Catholic Society of St. Pius V. In 2009, the nuns sold it for $450,000 to an art dealer, who was able to sell it for more than $2 million. Kelly was subsequently found guilty by a jury in Albany, New York, of defaming the dealer in remarks made in a television interview.[37]

Name

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Bouguereau's signature

Sources on his full name are contradictory: it is sometimes given as William-Adolphe Bouguereau (composed name), William Adolphe Bouguereau (usual and civil-only names according to the French tradition), while in other occasions it appears as Adolphe William Bouguereau (with Adolphe as the usual name). However, he used to sign his works simply as William Bouguereau (hinting "William" was his given name, whatever the order), or more precisely as "W.Bouguereau.date" (French alphabet) and later as "W-BOVGVEREAV-date" (Latin alphabet).[citation needed]

Awards and honours

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In literature

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In The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers, he is mentioned in various tales as a teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts.

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Sign of the Four (1890), the character Mr Sholto remarks, "there cannot be the least question about the Bouguereau. I am partial to the modern French school."[40]

Selected works

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Pleasant Burden (1895)
Sewing (1898)
Source
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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Wissman, Fronia E. (1996). Bouguereau. San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks. p. 10. ISBN 978-0876545829.
  2. ^ a b c d Glueck, Grace (6 January 1985). "To Bouguereau, Art Was Strictly 'The Beautiful'". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  3. ^ a b Ross, Fred. "William Bouguereau: Genius Reclaimed". Art Renewal. Archived from the original on 18 September 2015. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  4. ^ a b Wissman 1996, p. 11.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Bartoli, Damien and Ross, Frederick C. William Bouguereau: His Life and Works, 2010.
  6. ^ a b Vachon, Marius, William-Adolphe Bouguereau (2018), pp. 241–244 (in German)
  7. ^ "Musée d'Orsay: William Bouguereau Equality before Death". www.musee-orsay.fr.
  8. ^ a b c d Andrews, Gail (2011). Birmingham Museum of Art: Guide to the Collection. London: D Giles Ltd. pp. 222–223. ISBN 978-1904832775.
  9. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 24.
  10. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 25.
  11. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 13.
  12. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 70.
  13. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 14.
  14. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 112.
  15. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 60.
  16. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 31.
  17. ^ a b c d Wissman 1996, p. 103.
  18. ^ a b Wissman 1996, p. 16.
  19. ^ a b c d e Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Base Léonore, Archives Nationales
  20. ^ Collier, Peter; Lethbridge, Robert (1994). Artistic Relations: Literature and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-century France. London: Yale University Press. p. 50. ISBN 9780300060096.
  21. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 110.
  22. ^ a b Wissman 1996, p. 15.
  23. ^ Wissman 1996, p. 114.
  24. ^ a b Wissman 1996, p. 9.
  25. ^ Bertrand, Anne (2 February 1995). "Gauguin le rapin: ""Racontars de rapin, suivi de Art de Papou & chant de Rossignoou"" et ""La lutte pour les peintres""". liberation.fr (in French). Libération.
  26. ^ Intimate Journals , p. 174, at Google Books
  27. ^ Jacolbe, Jessica (12 March 2019). "The painting that changed New York". JSTOR.
  28. ^ Osborne, Carol M. Museum Builders in the West: The Stanfords as Collectors and Patrons of Art, 1870–1906. Stanford University Museum of Art, 1986, p. 18.
  29. ^ Katz, Wendy Jean, ed. (2018). The Trans-Mississippi and International Expositions of 1898-1899: art, anthropology, and popular culture at the Fin de Siècle. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-7880-6.
  30. ^ Jensen, Robert (1996). Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-siècle Europe. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691029261.
  31. ^ Clark, Kenneth. The Nude; A Study in Ideal Form, 163–164. Princeton University Press, 1956. ISBN 0-691-01788-3
  32. ^ IIsaacson, Robert. William-Adolphe Bouguereau (catalogue). New York Cultural Center and Farleigh Dickinson, 1974.
  33. ^ Berwick, Carly (20 October 2005). "Who Is Buying All Those Bouguereaus?". New York Sun. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
  34. ^ Roth, Mark (20 August 2007). "Gifted artist? Bouguereau's work controversial more than a century after his death". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
  35. ^ Gibson, Eric (26 February 2019). "Re-Examining A Reviled Master". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 26 February 2019.
  36. ^ "Bouguereau & America at The San Diego Museum of Art". San Diego Museum of Art.
  37. ^ Writer, Mark Oswald | Journal Staff. "Gallery Owner Didn't Cheat Nuns". www.abqjournal.com.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  38. ^ Handelsblad (Het), 15 May 1881.
  39. ^ Index biographique des membres et associés de l'Académie royale de Belgique (1769–2005).
  40. ^ Doyle, Arthur Conan (2011) [1890]. Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four (Sherlock Complete Set 2). Headline. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-7553-8765-6.

Further reading

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  • Boime, Albert (1974). Art Pompier: Anti-Impressionism. New York: Hofstra University Press.
  • Boime, Albert (1986). The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300037326.
  • Bouguereau, William-Adolphe (1885). Catalogue illustré des œuvres de W. Bouguereau, Paris: L. Baschet.
  • Celebonovic, Aleska (1974). Peinture kitsch ou réalisme bourgeois, l'art pompier dans le monde. Paris: Seghers.
  • D'Argencourt, Louise (1981). The Other Nineteenth Century (First ed.). Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada. ISBN 978-0888843487.
  • D'Argencourt, Louise; Walker, Mark Steven (1984). William Bouguereau 1925–1905. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
  • Gibson, Michael (1984). "Bouguereau's 'Photo-Idealism'". International Herald Tribune.
  • Glueck, Grace (6 January 1985). "To Bouguereau, Art Was Strictly 'The Beautiful'". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  • Harding, James (1980). Les peintres pompiers. Paris: Flammarion.
  • Isaacson, Robert (1974). William Adolphe Bouguereau. New York: New York Cultural Center.
  • Lécharny, Louis-Marie (1998). L'Art-Pompier. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2130493419.
  • Ritzenthaler, Cécile (1987). L'école des beaux art du XIXe siècle. Paris: Editions Mayer. ISBN 978-2852990029.
  • Rosenblum, Robert; Janson, H.W. (2004). 19th Century Art (Second ed.). New York: Pearson. ISBN 978-0131895621.
  • Russell, John (23 December 1974). "Art: Cultural Center Honors Bouguereau". The New York Times.
  • "The Bouguereau Market". The Arte newsletter. 6 January 1981. pp. 6–8.
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