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William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France.
As a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he won the Prix
de Rome in 1850 and his realistic genre oil painting and
mythological themes were exhibited at the annual exhibitions of the
Paris Salon for his entire working life. Although he fell into
disregard in the early 20th century, due perhaps to his staunch
opposition to the Impressionists, there is a new appreciation for
his work. In his lifetime, Bouguereau painted eight hundred and
twenty-six oil paintings. In his own time, Bouguereau was
considered to be one of the greatest oil painting artist in the
world. In 1900, his contemporaries
Degas and
Monet reportedly
named him as most likely to be remembered as the greatest
19th-century French painter by the year 2000, according to chairman
Fred Ross of the Art Renewal Center. Although with Degas' famous
trenchant wit, and the aesthetic tendencies of the two
Impressionists, it is possible the statement was meant as an ironic
comment on the taste of the future public. Bouguereau's works were
eagerly bought, at high prices, especially by American
millionaires. After about 1920, Bouguereau fell into a curious
disrepute. Some assert this may have been consciously engineered by
the new "art expert establishment", who resented his former
opposition to new developments in oil painting, but it is likely
that more profound societal factors were instrumental to this
enormous shift in taste and sensibility. For decades, his name was
not even mentioned in encyclopedias. Today, over one hundred
museums throughout the world exhibit his works.
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