In Bouguereau, Fronia E. Wissman offers astute and illuminating insights into the art,career, and family life of this great artist--whose beautiful paintings of a better, purer time and place continue to find favor with contemporary viewers. Over fifty full-color reproductions and several black-and-white illustrations  exemplify  Bouguereau's precision in creating timeless works of sensual, emotional, and intellectual appeal.

 Adolphe-William Bouguereau was at once one of the most reviled and one of the most beloved of French artists by the time of his death in 1905. Scorned by progressive painters and critics, who saw in his works all that was wrong with the official French world of art, he was a favorite of collectors, who found in his paintings of bathers, nymphs, and shepherdesses a realm of eternal beauty far from contemporary life.

Bouguereau displayed his rare talent for drawing at a very early age, and he was subsequently educated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He became a highly sought-after portraitist, while his paintings continued to be accepted at the Salon, where they were enthusiastically received by the public. His influence spread through his instruction at the Academie Julian, where he taught beginning in 1875. By the end of his life he had won medals at international expositions held in France, Germany, and the Netherlands and had been decorated by the governments of Belgium and Spain.

In Bouguereau, Fronia E. Wissman offers astute and illuminating insights into the art,career, and family life of this great artist--whose beautiful paintings of a better, purer time and place continue to find favor with contemporary viewers. Over fifty full-color reproductions and several black-and-white illustrations  exemplify  Bouguereau"s precision in creating timeless works of sensual, emotional, and intellectual appeal.

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER ONE

THE LIFE

Introduction

Youth and Training

Early Success o Private Life

Honors and Death

CHAPTER TWO

THE PAINTINGS

Early History Paintings and Decorative Cycles

The Change to Genre

Mothers and Children

Peasants, Children, and Other Outsiders

The Madonna and Child o Exhibition Strategies

Religious Works

History Painting and Classicizing Works

CHAPTER THREE

RECEPTION AND REPUTATION

Critical Reception

Collectors and Dealers

Teaching

Method

Elizabeth Jane Gardner

Reputation

Suggested Reading

Index of Plates

Index of Figures