Product Overview
William Adolphe Bouguereau was a follower of classical art and had no wish for everything like novelty or the avant-garde. His sense of idealism was his guiding principle, regarding the ugly as worthless for representation. His views angered many, for example, J.K. Huysmans who called Bouguereau a master in the hierarchy of mediocrity . He has left a large body of work and he is undoubtedly a key figure in 19th century French art. He remained a hard supporter of the academic training system at a time when it was criticized for stifling originality and nurturing mediocrity. With the advent of modernism he was scorned as one of the most prominent representatives of everything the new movement opposed: high technical finish, narrative content, sentimentality and a reliance on tradition. This hostility was further heightened by the perceived association of academic painting with the bourgeois values that had resulted in world war. However, recent more objective assessments have reinstated Bouguereau as an important 19th-century painter. William Bougeureau populated his lush fantasy world with an idealized array of mythological figures, angels, women and children. A consummate craftsman and master of human anatomy, he utilized a delicate palette and glorious light to sensitively capture nuances of personality and mood, vibrantly bringing the soul and spirit of his subjects to life.
