William Bouguereau

William Bouguereau (November 30th, 1825 - August 19th, 1905), born and died in La Rochelle was a painter French of academic style .

Biography

The sources on its complete registry office are contradictory: some give William Adolphe Bouguereau , others indicate Adolphe William Bouguereau . The denomination of use is " William Bouguereau".

He is the son of a trader in wines of Bordeaux and its family of catholic conviction , has English origins .

He learns the drawing at the council school from drawings and paintings of Bordeaux. In 1846 it enters to the Art schools of Paris the workshop of Barb on the recommendation of J.P. Allaux. It gains the second price of Rome ex-aequo with Boulanger for his painting Saint Pierre after its delivery of prison comes to find the faithful ones at Marie (1848).

It gains the Prime Minister Prix of Rome in 1850 with Zénobie found by the shepherds over the edges of Araxe .

In 1866 the merchant of tables Paul Durand-Ruel deals with his career and allows the artist to sell several fabrics to private customers; he thus enormously has success near the American purchasers, so much so that in 1878 at the time of the first retrospective of its painting for the international exhibition of Paris, the State cannot gather that twelve works the remainder of its production being expatriate in the United States. He signs also a contract with the publisher Goupil for the marketing of reproductions in engraving of his works.

Professor in 1888 with the School of Beautiful arts and the Academy Julian of Paris, his paintings of kind, realistic or on mythological topics are annually exposed with the Living room of Paris throughout all his career. He also works with great work of decoration, in particular for the hotel of Jean-François Bartholoni, and makes also the ceiling of the Large-Theater of Bordeaux.

In 1876, he becomes member of the Académie of the Art schools, but the following year is remembered by successive mournings, initially his/her two children and then his wife dies.

At a rather advanced age, Bouguereau marries, in second weddings, one of its pupils, the painter Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau. The painter also uses of his influence to give access of the women much of artistic institutions in France, including the French Academy.

He dies in 1905 with La Rochelle.

François-Alfred Delobbe was one of its pupils.

A painter of the idealism

Its tables on the Greek Mythologie abound and return to the topics already shown by the First Rebirth and the Néo-classicisme, periods which influenced its painting, it in particular abundantly covered allegorical subjects. Many scenes Idyllique S, pastoral and bucolic constitute its repertory.

A good number of its tables also illustrates the topics of the family ties and childhood.

Between all its paintings, exclusiveness returns to the Image of the woman, with Cabanel, Gervex and Gérome its name is associated with the kind of naked academic. Its Naissance of Venus is emblematic, of a sensual painting deeply influenced by Venus of Ingres. It is with this kind that he will know the most success but will also meet the most critics; because of the smooth and meticulous texture of its painting, Joris-Karl Huysmans will say to its opposition: “It is not even any more porcelain, it the is licked flask one!” . The fame of Bouguereau is established enough in this style so that the impressionist painter Degas, as for him regularly refused with the official Living rooms, speaks pejoratively about “bouguereauté” to qualify the kind.

After the mourning which it undergoes in 1877 it turns to a painting to religious topic and forsakes the topics in connection with the Antiquity of its beginning.

Posterity

Discredited shortly after its death and until worms the end of the 20th century, undoubtedly, to some extent, because of the disinterest towards academic painting expressed by several generations of critics and historians of art, his work was redécouverte tardily.

Of alive sound, the fabrics of Bouguereau were very required by the new American rich person who bought them at high prices, so that most of its works left France.

In the context of the 20th century, where the influence of the modernism grows in history of art to become about it finally the current official one, academic art was discredited, devaluated, severely criticized by a modernistic thought favorable to the art of avant-garde and put at the index, object of mockeries, vituperations (often supported on quotations of Zola or Huysmans) and sullied by defamatory rumors. It was also reproached to the painter his participation in the jurys of the official Salons of painting of the 19th century which were mainly opposed to the admission of works concerned with the modern movements of painting (Cézanne called the Living room “Living room of Bouguereau”).

As from the Sixties, Salvador Dali proclamation her admiration for the art of Bouguereau which he opposes to Picasso, and contributes to its redécouverte.

Since the retrospective exposure of its works organized to the Petit Palais in Paris in 1984, the reputation of Bouguereau gradually improved, on bottom of controversy between partisans and opponents with the back in favor of academic painting. Thus, with the opening of the Museum of Orsay, in Paris in 1986, the exposure of academic works was severely criticized by a majority of criticisms of Article In 2001, Fred Ross, president of the Art Renewal Center which promotes the rehabilitation of Bouguereau, fustigates what it estimates to be a “propaganda” of the modernism having led, according to him, with the “system of thought most oppressive and restrictive of all the history of art”. It publishes a reasoned catalog of the painted work of Bouguereau written by Damien Bartoli.

At the beginning of the 21e century, much see in Bouguereau one of the French great painters of the 19th century. In off testify the organization in 2006-2007 by Philbrook Museum Art to a traditional exposition to the painter and his American pupils, the renewed interest of the collectors of art for its work and the taste of the public for its paintings in the museums.

Anecdote

A portrait by Bouguereau of Mrs Olry-Roederer was acquired in March 2005 for 137.000 € by the Roderer company. The grandson of the model, administrator of this famous country cottage was rather surprised to re-examine, in the room of administration, the portrait of his grandmother who, following a fire, had been destroyed to 80% and whom it had given to a restorer.

List its tables

Dante and Virgile in hell , 1850,281x225 cm
the Dance , (1856), 367x185 cm., Museum of Orsay, Paris
the Day of dead the , (1859), 147x120 cm., Museum of the Art schools, Bordeaux
Spring , 1866
First caresses , 1866
Only in the world , 1867
Couseuse , 1869
Small Maraudeuses , 1872,200.5x109 cm
the first Kiss , 1873
Nymphs and Satyr , 1873,260x180 cm
Homère and its guide , 1874,209x143 cm
Cupid , 1875
At the edge of the Brook , 1875
Pietà , 1876,230x148 cm
the two Sisters , 1877
Charity , 1878,196x117 cm
Young Gipsies , 1879,166x99 cm
Venus birth , 1879,300x218 cm, Museum of Orsay
the Rest , 1879,164x107 cm
Young girl being defended against Eros , 1880
Scourging of Our Lord Jesus Christ , 1880,210x390 cm, (Museum fine arts of the La Rochelle)
night Mood , 1882
the hazel nuts , 1882,87.5x134 cm
Alma Parens , 1883,230x140 cm
Crown of Flowers , 1884
Biblis , 1884,48x79 cm
the She-ass , 1884,101.5x137 cm
Love with the Butterfly , 1888,168x117 cm
Sitted Madonna , 1888,176.5x103 cm
the Shepherdess , 1889
Pastourelle , 1889,159x93 cm
Love and Psyche, children, 1889,119.5x71 cm

Portrait of Gabrielle Cot , 1890,45.5x38 cm

Calinerie , 1890,145x91 cm

the gipsy , 1890

the small Shepherdess , 1891,155.5x86.5 cm

awakening of the heart , 1892,160x111 cm

the guépier 1892,213x152.5 cm

Innocence , 1893

the Removal of Psyché , 1895,209x120 cm

To taste It , 1895,115.5x70 cm

the young Shepherdess , 1895

Pain of love , 1899 Virgin

with the angels , 1900,285x185 cm, Museum of the Petit Palais

Young Priestess , 1902

the Madonna with the Pinks , 1903,130x90.5 cm

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