William-Adolphe Bouguereau (which is a French name that you can hear pronounced
here) is one of my all-time favorite artists. His skill is equal to, if not higher than, the skill of artists like Caravaggio and Rubens. However, despite the fact that I've taken SCAD art history classes covering everything from cave drawings to art made two years ago, I have never come across him in any of my textbooks.
Le Ravissement de Psyche (The Rapture of Psyche)
During his time, Bouguereau (1825-1905) was extremely famous and received many commissions at high prices. Artists and art collectors world-wide revered him. Unfortunately, the tastes of the art world are always changing, and in the 1920s, as the world's acceptance of the Impressionists rose, Bouguereau's fame began to fall. He had always disliked the Impressionist style (which began in the late 1800s), and never included any aspects of it in his work. As a result, Impressionist loving art collectors found nothing of value in Bouguereau's polished, classical work. Degas and his friends even used the term "Bouguereauté" to derogatorily refer to a style that used a licked finish (where the painting's surface is smoothed so that the brushstrokes are no longer visible). Dislike of Bouguereau reached such a point that for many decades you couldn't even find his name in encyclopedias. To this day, he is still often left out of art history textbooks.
Premier Deuil (First Mourning)
Luckily, places like the
Art Renewal Center help to keep the work of great classical artists like Bouguereau in circulation. In fact, Bouguereau is listed as the #1 favorite artist of ARC visitors based on page hits. This is easily understood. He brought the detail and beauty of the Renaissance (which lasted from the 14th to 17th century) back into more modern times. His amazing skills in lighting, composition, and painting skin created breathtaking images of classical and mythological subjects.
Nymphes et Satyre (Nymphs and Satyr)
But more importantly, he showed that the skills of the Renaissance were still achievable. It is easy, especially as an art student, to think that the beautiful idealized realism of the classical age is some unachievable ability that was given to artists by the magic of the Renaissance. We know that realism is still achievable, what with the frighteningly photorealistic paintings by some modern artists, but idealized realism is much harder to achieve. It requires a knowledge of the rules and properties of the real world, and knowledge of how to twist and break those rules and properties to make beauty. Most current art colleges don't teach this, and because it can take a long time to learn such things on one's own, many people don't learn. And why should they, when the art world is content with nonrepresentational shapes or semi-realistic forms? However, I personally like detailed classical art much more than most modern art. There is something about art like Bouguereau's that makes you stop and really look at it, instead of just glancing and moving on. It has a refreshing amount of story and beauty that sadly is not part of much mainstream gallery art. You can see more of Bouguereau's work in the
online Bouguereau gallery at the Art Renewal Center.
Portrait de Gabrielle Cot (Portrait of Gabrielle Cot)
L'oiseau Chéri (The Honey Bird)
Fardeau Agreable (Pleasant Burden)
