Milwaukee Art Museum
February 15–May 12, 2019
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art
(06/22/19–09/22/19)
(06/22/19–09/22/19)
San Diego Museum of Art
(11/09/19–03/15/20)
(11/09/19–03/15/20)
As the first major exhibition on the artist since the 1980s, Bouguereau & America will offer fresh perspectives on works that form the backbone of many museum collections.
- William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825–1905), Homer and His Guide (Homère et son guide), 1874. Oil on canvas. Layton Art Collection Inc., Gift of Frederick Layton L1888.5. Photographer credit: Larry Sanders.
Portrait of Frances and Eva Jonhston (detail; 1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Private collection
Bouguereau & America
Portrait of Frances and Eva Jonhston (detail; 1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Private collection
William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s highly polished, sentimental paintings
were stars of the Paris Salon in the late 19th century, and much
sought-after by American collectors. This show looks at the reasons for
the artist’s tremendous popularity and later falling out of fashion. Find out more from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s website.
Preview the exhibition below | See Apollo’s Picks of the Week here
Preview the exhibition below | See Apollo’s Picks of the Week here
Washerwomen of Fouesnant (1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
Bouguereau & America
Portrait of Frances and Eva Jonhston (detail; 1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Private collection
William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s highly polished, sentimental paintings
were stars of the Paris Salon in the late 19th century, and much
sought-after by American collectors. This show looks at the reasons for
the artist’s tremendous popularity and later falling out of fashion. Find out more from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s website.
Preview the exhibition below | See Apollo’s Picks of the Week here
With his paintings of cherubic children, melancholy
Madonnas, and rustic scenes such as this, Bouguereau has come to
encapsulate our image of artistic taste in America in the second half of
the 19th century. During this time, he was one of the most desirable
living artists for US collectors – when he died in 1905, an obituary
observed that ‘no respectable amateur would mention his new fad of
picture-collecting until he had secured a “Bouguereau” for his parlor’.
Bouguereau’s fame brought him prestigious commissions in the US; this
work depicts the two daughters of John Taylor Johnston, a railroad
executive who would become the first president of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York. The portrait reveals the artist’s great skill
for painting children, as well as his knack for arresting compositions;
the younger Eva looks directly at the viewer, ignoring her sister and
her book.
Preview the exhibition below | See Apollo’s Picks of the Week here
Washerwomen of Fouesnant (1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
Portrait of Frances and Eva Jonhston (1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Admiration (1897), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo: Roger Fry
Good article
Catalogue
An in-depth exploration into the immense popularity of
William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s work in America throughout the late 19th
and early 20th centuries
Seeking to bring Gallic sophistication and worldly elegance into their galleries and drawing rooms, wealthy Americans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries collected the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) in record numbers.
Seeking to bring Gallic sophistication and worldly elegance into their galleries and drawing rooms, wealthy Americans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries collected the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) in record numbers.
This fascinating volume offers an in-depth exploration of
Bouguereau’s overwhelming popularity in turn-of-the-century America and
the ways that his work—widely known from reviews, exhibitions, and
inexpensive reproductions—resonated with the American public. While also
lauded by the French artistic establishment and a dominant presence at
the Parisian Salons, Bouguereau achieved his greatest success selling
his idealized and polished paintings to a voracious American market.
In
this book, the authors discuss how the artist’s sensual classical
maidens, Raphaelesque Madonnas, and pristine peasant children embodied
the tastes of American Gilded Age patrons, and how Bouguereau’s canvases
persuasively functioned as freshly painted Old Masters for collectors
flush with new money.
Tanya Paul is Isabel and Alfred Bader Curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Stanton Thomas is curator of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Saint Petersburg, Florida.
