Bouguereau 2

Well here it is! This is the one that everybody talks about. If you click on this you should get a nice big image of it. This is the Nymphs and Satyr from the collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. This enormous painting leaves viewers awestruck. Many times I have heard stories of people having no idea who Bouguereau was, enter the room where this is hung and stand and stare in amazement for a half hour before they are able to walk away. This is one of the most powerful paintings in America.

image:artrenewal.org
Breton brother and sister, from 1871 is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In the mid eighteen fifties, back in Paris, Bouguereau becomes a successful artist in the Paris Salon. He marries and has five children. He moves from painting the historical and religious paintings to the genre scenes of peasants and beautiful young women. As successful as his public life is, his private life bears the sorrow of the death of several children and then his wife. Some of the sentimentality of his art and the era, came from the mortality of the young and seemingly healthy. Before antibiotics, death was a common visitor in the nursery. Late in life he married Elizabeth Gardner from Essex, New Hampshire.


image; artrenewal.org

The Broken Pitcher is at the Fine Arts Museum in San Fransisco. This is a great example of his work and I think better than the one in the Met. The broken pitcher suggests her lost virginity, hence her pensive look. Like a naughty Pomeranian it must have slipped its leash! Watch out for that spigot!

This broken pitcher bit was a theme in French painting before Bouguereau, but he used it repeatedly. The story line is a throwaway, the reason for this painting is its beautiful glowing light and flawless worksmanship.


image:artrenewal.org

Admiration 1897,

These little pictures don't make the viewer aware of the perfection of the drawing in these figures or of the glow they have in real life. They are not photorealistic and in fact Bouguereau did all of these without using photography. They are all built up, from thumbnails, to sketches, to color studies and figure drawings to cartoons, and then painted over drawings inked onto the canvas. Bouguereau was such a hard worker his friends called him Sisyphus, after the character in Greek mythology who was condemned to forever roll an enormous boulder up a hill. He made over 600 of these paintings, and the figures are all life sized or nearly life sized.

More tomorrow. Maybe its time to draw some lines on a Bouguereau.