Bouguereau
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WILLIAM ADOLPHE (bög-rō'), a French painter, born in La Rochelle, Nov. 30, 1825. After a youth of hardship courageously endured he succeeded in reaching Paris, where he was educated at the studio of Picot, and at the Beaux Arts. In 1850 he gained the Prix de Rome, and went to Italy to study. His first great success was "The Body of St. Cecilia Borne to the Catacombs" in the Salon of 1854. He painted portraits occasionally, but his subjects are chiefly ideal, idyllic and religious. He was a thorough draftsman, and excelled in the painting of flesh. He died Aug. 20, 1905. BOUILLÉ (bö-yā'), FRANÇOIS CLAUDE AMOUR, MARQUIS DE, a French general, born in Cluzel, Nov. 19, 1739; entered the army at the age of 14 and served with distinction in Germany during the Seven Years' War. In 1768 he was appointed governor of the island of Guadeloupe, and afterward commander-in-chief of all the French forces in the West Indies. When war broke out in 1778, he successively took from the British, Dominica, Tobago, St. Eustache, Saba, St. Martin, St. Christopher's, and Nevis. Louis XVI. nominated him a member of the Assembly of Notables in 1787-1788; in 1790 he was made commander-in-chief of the army of the Meuse, the Saar, and the Moselle. For his share in the attempted escape of Louis XVI. he had to flee from France. In 1791 he entered into the service of Gustavus III., of Sweden, and afterward served in the corps of the Prince of Condé. He rejected a proposal, made in 1793, that he should take the chief command in La Vendée; and went to England, where he wrote his Mémoires sur la Révolution Française." He died in London, Nov. 14, 1800.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 Bouguereau was still spoken of as a master draftsman who "excelled in the painting of flesh" — the settled judgement of the Salon world he had dominated. Within a generation that judgement collapsed: as modernism took hold, his polished nymphs and peasant girls became the standard example of academic kitsch, dropped from museum walls and sold for very little through the mid-twentieth century. The rehabilitation began in the 1970s and was sealed by the 1984 retrospective that travelled from the Petit Palais in Paris to Montreal and Hartford, and his canvases now fetch millions at auction. Most reference works give his death as 19 August 1905, a day earlier than Collier's.
Written for this edition, 2026.