William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825- 1905)//💦✔ FRENCH realism painter

Описание: William Adolphe Bouguereau is a French Realism Painter




He was born on November 30, 1825 in La Rochelle, Poitou-Charentes, France.


He was the second of the four children of the English wine merchant Théodore Bouguereau, his mother was Marie Marguérite Bonnin.


He was raised in a Calvinist family, although at the age of five he was baptized a Catholic. In 1832, they moved to Saint-Martin, on the Ile de Ré, where he studied and lived with his uncle Eugène, priest in the Saint-Étienne church in Mortagne sur Gironde. In 1839, he entered his nephew at the Pons school to study classical art, religion, and history. At 16 he gave; drawing classes with Louis Sage, disciple of Ingres.
In 1841, he moved to Bordeaux with his family and entered the municipal art school, then the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Thanks to a letter of recommendation, it was used in Francois-Édouard Picot's painting studio. In 1850 he won the Grand Prix de Rome. He enjoyed a scholarship and was sent to Villa Médici in Rome. He traveled for a few years in Italy copying classical works and on his return to Paris, he received a second medal in the Salon of 1854.


Recognized as one of the most gifted painters of his time, he was one of the greatest exponents of French academicism. Author of more than eight hundred works. Thanks to his technical mastery, he became the favorite painter of the upper class of his time. Master of the detailed portrait, he also created religious works endowed with a deep emotion, in addition, many of his works contain nudes with a certain charge of eroticism. In 1857 the emperor Napoleon III commissioned a portrait with the empress and the historical work "Napoléon III visiting the floods of Tarascon".


On January 8, 1876, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts. In 1881, after the founding of the Society of French Artists, he was appointed first president of the painting chapter. In 1903 he was awarded the "Grand Officer" of the Legion of Honor. At the end of that year his poor health already prevented him from doing his job.


He was married to Marie-Nelly Monchablon from 1856 to 1877, and remarried, from 1896, to the artist, Elizabeth Jane Gardner, born in the United States.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau died on August 19, 1905 at his home in La Rochelle from a heart problem. He is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery.