Art work and creative expression

William Bouguereau is regarded as one of history's true artistic geniuses, and among his unparalleled accomplishments, was responsible for opening French academies to women (Ross pp). He is arguably the greatest painter of the human figure, capturing not only the physical anatomy, but the subtle nuances of personality and mood, as well as the souls and spirits of his subjects (Ross pp). If Rembrandt captured the soul of age, then Bouguereau captured the soul of youth (Ross pp).

Bouguereau once said, "One has to seek Beauty and Truth ... There's only one kind of painting. It is the painting that presents the eye with perfection, the kind of beautiful and impeccable enamel you find in Veronese and Titian" (Bouguereau pp). To support himself while attending the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he worked as a bookkeeper for a wine merchant and colored lithographic labels for a local grocer (Bouguereau pp). After hours, in the evening, he created drawings from memory, and this perseverance and discipline resulted in an extraordinary production of art during his career, more than seven hundred finished works (Bouguereau pp). Although he achieved a high level of public acclaim and financial success, he was generous with his time and financial assistance in helping struggling young artists (Bouguereau pp).

Trained in classical sculpture and painting, Bouguereau made careful study of form and technique and before beginning a painting, would master the history of the subject by completing numerous sketches (Bouguereau pp). The hallmarks of his paintings are demonstrated in the tender portrayals of children and domestic scenes, his love of rich color, and his obvious skill and passion for the classics (Bouguereau pp).

Adolphe William Bouguereau, 1825-1905, exhibited in Paris Salons for more than fifty years (Adolphe pp). Due to his training and skill, he opposed the works of the impressionists because to him they were no more than sketches left unfinished (Adolphe pp). Following his death, Bouguereau and his paintings fell out of favor with scholars and the general public alike (Aldolphe pp). However during the last quarter of the twentieth century there was a renewed interest and reappraisal of his works, including a major retrospective exhibition in Paris during the mid-1980's (Aldolphe pp).

Fred Ross notes that when one considered the level of skill and craft, and the fact that the great majority of his works are life-size, no one can dispute that this is one of the largest bodies of work ever produced by any artist (Ross pp). Furthermore, more than half of these paintings are true masterpieces, thus Bouguereau is an artist who ranks among the masters of western art, such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Carravaggio (Ross pp). Yet, from the beginning of World War I to the 1980's, the number of people in America and Europe who had ever been exposed to the name of William Bouguereau, much less see his work, was extremely rare (Bartoli pp). In fact, only a handful of people had ever had the opportunity to see a single photograph of his work, let alone the real thing (Bartoli pp). As Damien Bartoli points out, references to his work could only be found in tiny black -- and white images offered in old dictionaries and art books (Bartoli pp). Moreover, among the scarce paintings in French public collections, none were exhibited, but rather they were rolled up or carelessly stored with other equally despised academic paintings (Bartoli pp).