Works by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

William-Adolphe Bouguereau showed at the Paris Salon all his working life, filling his canvases with goddesses, nymphs, shepherdesses and madonnas, and the skin, hands and feet in his pictures drew special praise.

Bouguereau trained under François-Édouard Picot and competed three times for the Prix de Rome. Dante and Virgil in Hell dates from the third attempt, in 1850: two naked men grapple in the foreground, one sinking his teeth into the other's neck, while the poets watch and a winged demon hovers above. The shared first prize came for Zenobia found by Shepherds on the banks of the Araxes, where shepherds lift a limp woman in white and gold.

Back from Rome in 1854, he took on decorating work to pay off his debts. Bacchante on a Panther is one of six paintings for Étienne Bartholony's house in Paris, a woman in rose drapery on a leaping panther, against gold painted as mosaic. By 1859 he was turning to more personal, rustic subjects. In The Elder Sister, of 1869, a barefoot girl on a grassy bank holds a sleeping baby in a red cap. The green jug at the feet of The Broken Pitcher, of 1891, has its base knocked in, an old sign of lost innocence. At lower left he signed W-BOVGVEREAV-1891, the capital form he used later; in 1850 he had written W.Bouguereau.

He also sold smaller versions of his public pictures. A Young Girl Defending Herself against Love, of about 1880, repeats a larger Salon painting of that year, probably for a buyer who had seen it there; she smiles as she holds Cupid off at arm's length.

Sources: Wikipedia, J. Paul Getty Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Cleveland Museum of Art, Beaux-Arts de Paris, Musée d'Orsay, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.