William-Adolphe Bouguereau is remembered for work the next generation could not ignore.
The record lists William-Adolphe Bouguereau as French academic painter (1825-1905).
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born at La Rochelle in 1825. His recorded nationality is France. He trained at Beaux-Arts de Paris and French Academy in Rome.
The nineteenth century broke the academy's authority: independent exhibitions, dealers and the beginnings of modernism.
He worked as painter and architectural drafter.
His recorded movement is academic art and pont-aven school.
Among his best-known works are Dawn, The Birth of Venus and The First Mourning. A painting outlives the argument about it, which is the only durable form of an artistic reputation.
Recognition followed: Prix de Rome (1850), Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, Knight of the Legion of Honour and Officer of the Legion of Honour.
That the work was made in France shaped it: artistic traditions, academies and the galleries that decide what is seen have never been evenly distributed.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau died in 1905, aged 80. The work remains, hanging in collections that outlived both the artist and the market that first priced it.
Achievements
- Prix de Rome — 1850
- Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour
- Knight of the Legion of Honour
- Officer of the Legion of Honour
- Commander of the Legion of Honour
- Notable work: Dawn
- Notable work: The Birth of Venus
- Notable work: The First Mourning
- Notable work: Dante and Virgil in Hell
- Movement: academic art and Pont-Aven School
