Birth Year : 1825
Death Year : 1905
Country : France
Adolphe-William Bouguereau was a French painter who upheld standards
of academic conservatism during a revolutionary era in modern painting.
His work falls roughly into three categories: portraits, religious works,
and nudes. Winning the coveted Prix de Rome in 1850 allowed Bouguereau
to leave Paris and study for four years in Rome. Upon his return to Paris,
prestige and influence allowed him to wage war against the modernist tendencies
of French art. His portraits and religious works evince a photographic
quality, highly prized by the academic painters of his period, in which
brushstrokes are strictly concealed and a sense of three-dimensionality
is achieved - though possibly at the expense of expression and personality.
The broad sentimentality from which his progressive contemporaries were
strongly dissenting is at a premium in Bouguereau's work, and his nudes
possess a flirtatious sensuality that made them highly accessible to conservative
viewers of the time.
As a powerful member of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture,
Bouguereau prevented avant-garde works from being shown at the Salon, the
Academy's official exhibition. Artists who believed themselves to have
been rejected by the Salon because of Bouguereau's efforts include the
post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne, who referred
to "the Salon de Monsieur de Bouguereau." With the triumph of the avant-garde
in the twentieth century, Bouguereau's reputation quickly declined. While
his hostility toward new ideas have made him a natural enemy for some progressive
artists and historians, in the present post-modernist era, interest in
his work has once again begun to accelerate.
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Adolphe William Bouguereau
La Naissance de Venus
Adolphe William Bouguereau
First Kiss (detail)
Adolphe William Bouguereau
Girl Defending Herself
Against Love
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