Bouguereau: 136 Masterpieces

This Art Book with Foreword and annotated reproductions by Maria Tsaneva contains 136 selected paintings and drawings of William Adolphe Bouguereau.

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. . A skilled 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. Bouguereau has left a large body of work and he is undoubtedly a key figure in 19th century French art. Although his work was widely collected by the English and more especially by the Americans in his lifetime, Bouguereau’s reputation in France was more indistinct—indeed quite low—in his later years. 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 high technical finish, narrative content, sentimentality and a reliance on tradition. Nevertheless, recent more objective assessments have reinstated Bouguereau as an important 19th-century painter.