BOUGUEREAU ART AT SAN DIEGO ART MUSEUM

Art by Bouguereau at the San Diego Art museum

William-Adolphe Bouguereau enjoyed a remarkable popularity in the United States, particularly during the late 1800s through the early 20th century. Lauded and laureled by the French artistic establishment, and a dominant presence at the Parisian Salons, Bouguereau’s canvases offered American collectors the chance to bring Gallic sophistication and worldly elegance to their own galleries and drawing rooms. The master’s idealized, polished images—of chastely sensual classical maidens, Raphaelesque Madonnas, and impossibly pristine peasant children—embodied the tastes of the American Victorian age, and of his Gilded Age patrons. Bouguereau canvases at one time were de rigueur for every collector and arts institution from the late 1860s to the early 1900s in America.

As art turned towards Impressionism throughout much of the 20th century, artists rejected Bouguereau’s conventional treatment of paint and form while they explored abstraction, color field painting, and investigated alternative forms of art and representation. Ostracized for nearly 80 years, his portrayals of peasants and feminine beauty during his time were strongly embraced by his contemporary academic circle but reviled as the Realist movement in visual arts and literature took hold and gave way to Modernism.

 This exhibition also includes a long time favorite by Bouguereau at The San Diego Museum of Art – The Young Shepherdess, 1885.