BOUGUEREAU REDISCOVERED

Young Princess

BOUGUEREAU REDISCOVERED

By Joan K. Yanni

Many artists live in poverty during their early years, unknown and unrecognized, only to be acclaimed after their death. Van Gogh was one of these. Others achieve success and acclamation during their lifetime, but are neglected and even denigrated in later years. Adolphe William Bouguereau is among these.Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France in 1825, the son of merchants who sold wine and olive oil. Early in life, he showed a facility for drawing, but his parents wanted him to join the family business, and he did for a time. Then a client urged his father to allow his son to study art at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. For a time William (he never used the Adolphe) balanced working and art study, earning extra money by designing labels for jams and preserves. Even with only part time study, he won first prize in figure painting at the art school for a canvas of Saint Roch. This decided his future.

Since the center of the art world was in Paris, not Bordeaux, the next step was getting there. Bouguereau’s parents could not afford to send him, but his uncle, a priest, came to his rescue. He arranged for Bouguereau to paint the portraits of parishioners, and the money he made in this venture was matched by an aunt. At the age of 21 he had enough to go to Paris. He was accepted into the studio of Francois Edouard Picot, and then at the prestigious École des Beaux- Arts.

At the school students competed for honors in a variety of contests, the highest prize being the Prix de Rome--four years at the Villa Medici, the seat of the French Academy in Rome, to study classical art and the Italian Renaissamce masters. In 1850 Bouguereau was awarded the Prix de Rome. 

Living in Italy was a luxury for him. The prize carried a 4000 franc stipend, and the city of La Rochelle had given him 600 francs when he was admitted to the art school--more money than he had ever had before. He delighted in being able to afford food and lodging so that he could devote his energy to art. In addition to soaking up all that could be learned about classical and Renaissance art in Rome, he traveled throughout Italy and copied the masters in Assisi, Siena, Florence, Venice,  Naples---everywhere! The things that he saw during his sojourn in Italy inspired his art for the rest of his life.

On his return to Paris he found immediate success. He was awarded commissions in portraiture in both Paris and La Rochelle, and he exhibited regularly at the Salon. His salon paintings, drawn from subjects taken from the Bible and mythology, were mainly somber. Although these brought acclaim, they did not have commercial appeal. Always an astute businessman, Bouguereau  began to move toward happier themes that would attract the middle class. In addition to painting for the Salon, he found dealers who could attract good prices from potential buyers. Beginning in the 1860s, his paintings became popular in England and America. In America new millionaire art patrons such as Chrysler, Frick and Chester Dale bought his works.

Boguereau painted prodigiously, and produced an amazing number of paintings, all beautifully composed with an enamel -like finish which he achieved  by using layers of thin washes. His technical

 mastery was unmatched. He worked in his studio non-stop, and, unlike artists like Rubens, never used assistants to do backgrounds or tedious underpainting.

Bouguereau had a passion for teaching, and though he allowed his students to express some individuality, he taught his own conventional style. Some students caused problems, the most famous being Matisse. The master tried to encourage Matisse, but finally, exasperated, told the young artist “You badly need to learn perspective...but first you need to know how to hold a pencil.” Bouguereau believed in the Old Masters and deplored the artists who wanted to create a new art when the old was so perfect. He clashed with Cézanne, Renoir, and others. He did, however, support women in art, both in his atelier, later in the Julian Academy, and finally in the École des Beaux Arts itself.

As the growing number of painters began to label Bouguereau and his colleagues reactionaries in the face of the new Impressionism and Post Impressionism, the tastes of the public began to change. Bouguereau remained stubbornly unmoved, creating his world of fantasy and light. He never felt the need to defend himself against detractors, even when the rumors turned to slander. It was said that he was a lecher, only happy when he was painting nudes. Yet his nudes, perfect as they are, make up less than 10% of his work. He, as well as his colleagues in the salon, fell out of favor as the younger artists and new movements took over the art world.

Bouguereau died in 1905. His works were relegated to back rooms and museum basements from World War I through the 70s. In 1983 the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts mounted a Bouguereau retrospective, and found that his works were undergoing a reevaluation. Prices for his paintings have sky-rocketed, and the good and the beautiful are again looked on with favor.

MAG has two of Bouguereau’s works: Young Priestess (73.1) is almost life-size--71 1/4 ” x  32”. The priestess is pensive, her dark hair flowing over her shoulders. She is dressed in a pink classical robe and holding a staff.  Her hand touches her chin, her eyes are demurely downcast. She stands on an ancient Greek mosaic floor. Her hands and feet are perfectly modeled  

Our second painting is smaller, 30” x 24”, but also charming and idealized. In The Washerwomen of Fouesnant (55.61) the women wear the starched white headdresses of Brittany; their figures are beautifully composed and their ragged dresses are as carefully modeled as classical drapery. The figure in the foreground predominates. She wears a red skirt and balances a basket of bright blue clothes on her head. Another woman kneels to pick up a basket. Four girls are washing by a river bank. None look tired or worn. It is Bouguereau’s usual idyllic scene. The feet of the main figure are pink and lovely despite walking barefoot over grass and dirt. They look just like those of the priestess.

Source: Google: ARC ARTicles; press release from the Montreal Museum of Art 7/22//83; “The Naughty Painting” by Timothy Cahill in the 2000 Journal of The Clark Institute; curatorial archives