Bouguereau painted 822 known works, won every honour, then fell out of fashion
In his lifetime William-Adolphe Bouguereau was the model salon painter: prized in France and America, showered with official honours and paid top prices. The Impressionists loathed him, and by the early 20th century the public had moved on too. Only a 1980s revival of figure painting brought him back.
Born in La Rochelle on 30 November 1825 to a family trading in wine and olive oil, he was sent at twelve to live with an uncle who was a priest, and later studied for the priesthood in Pons. There he learned drawing from Louis Sage, a former pupil of Ingres. To pay for a move to Paris he turned out 33 oil portraits in three months; they were unsigned, and just one has been located. He reached the capital in March 1846.
At the École des Beaux-Arts he supplemented lessons by attending anatomical dissections and studying costume and archaeology. The goal was the Prix de Rome and its three-year stay at the Villa Medici. He failed in 1848 and again in 1849, after 106 days of competition, before sharing first prize in 1850 with a scene of shepherds discovering Zenobia beside the Araxes. In Rome he walked as far as Naples and Pompeii and absorbed classical literature, which steered his subjects for the rest of his life. Raphael was a particular hero; he copied The Triumph of Galatea as a prize requirement.
Back in France, commissions paid off his Italian debts. Napoleon III bought his Holy Family from the 1863 Salon and gave it to Empress Eugénie. He was made a member of the Legion of Honour in 1859 and rose to Grand Officier in 1905. Nymphs, bathers and madonnas, rendered through careful pencil studies and oil sketches, won admiration above all for skin, hands and feet.
He was also a prolific teacher. From 1875 he taught drawing at the Académie Julian, a mixed school with no entrance exams, instructing hundreds of students from around the world; Henri Matisse was among those who rebelled against his style. His private life held great loss: his partner Nelly, a former model he married in 1866, died in 1877, as did several of their children. He later married his pupil Elizabeth Jane Gardner.
Source: William-Adolphe Bouguereau
