Bouguereau made more than seven hundred finished works. French painter. From 1838 to 1841 he took drawing lessons from Louis Sage, a pupil of Ingres, while attending the coll?ge at Pons. In 1841 the family moved to Bordeaux where in 1842 his father allowed him to attend the Ecole Municipale de Dessin et de Peinture part-time, under Jean-Paul Alaux. In 1844 he won the first prize for figure painting, which confirmed his desire to become a painter. As there were insufficient family funds to send him straight to Paris he painted portraits of the local gentry from 1845 to 1846 to earn money. In 1846 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in the studio of Francois-Edouard Picot. This was the beginning of the standard academic training of which he became so ardent a defender later in life. Such early works as Equality reveal the technical proficiency he had attained even while still training. In 1850 he was awarded one of the two Premier Grand Prix de Rome for Zenobia Discovered by Shepherds on the Bank of the River Araxes (1850; Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). In December 1850 he left for Rome where he remained at the Villa Medici until 1854, working under Victor Schnetz and Jean Alaux (1786-1864). During this period he made an extensive study of Giotto's work at Assisi and Padua and was also impressed by the works of other Renaissance masters and by Classical art. On his return to France he exhibited the Triumph of the Martyr (1853; Luneville, Mus. Luneville; ) at the Salon of 1854. It depicted St Cecilia's body being carried to the catacombs, and its high finish, restrained colour and classical poses were to be constant features of his painting thereafter. All his works were executed in several stages involving an initial oil sketch followed by numerous pencil drawings taken from life. Though he generally restricted himself to classical, religious and genre subjects, he was commissioned by the state to paint Napoleon III Visiting the Flood Victims of Tarascon in 1856   Related Paintings of Adolphe William Bouguereau :. | Portrait of Madame la Comtesse de Cambaceres (mk26) | Song of the Angels (mk26) | Temptation (mk26) | Bathers | Idyll:Family from Antiquity (nn04) |
Related Artists:
Daniel Chester French
American Neoclassical Sculptor, 1850-1931.was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. French was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, to Henry Flagg French, a lawyer, Assistant US Treasury Secretary and author of a book that described the French drain. Daniel Chester French was a neighbor and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Alcott family. His decision to pursue sculpting was influenced by Louisa May Alcott's sister May Alcott. After a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, French worked on his father's farm. While visiting relatives in Brooklyn, New York City, he spent a month in the studio of John Quincy Adams Ward, then began to work on commissions, and at the age of twenty-three received from the town of Concord, Massachusetts, an order for his well-known statue The Minute Man, which was unveiled April 19, 1875 on the centenary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Previously French had gone to Florence, Italy, where he spent a year working with sculptor Thomas Ball. In 1917, he designed the Pulitzer Prize gold medal presented to laureates. In collaboration with Edward Clark Potter he modelled the George Washington statue, presented to France by the Daughters of the American Revolution; the General Grant in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, and the General Joseph Hooker statue in Boston. In 1893, French was a founding member of the National Sculpture Society, and he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. French also became a member of the National Academy of Design (1901), the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Sculpture Society, the Architectural League, and the Accademia di San Luca, of Rome. French was one of many sculptors who frequently employed Audrey Munson as a model.
BRAY, Jan de
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1627-1697 Painter, draughtsman and etcher, son of Salomon de Bray. He spent virtually the whole of his career in Haarlem, except for the period 1686-8, when he lived in Amsterdam. After training with his father, Jan began working as a portrait painter in Haarlem in 1650, an activity he continued for the next 40 years. Between 1667 and 1684 he served on the committee for the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, whose leading members he portrayed in a picture dated 1675 (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) that includes a self-portrait (Jan is seen standing and drawing on the left). He married three times, in 1668, 1670 and 1672. His first two wives died a year after their marriage, his third two years afterwards, and in each case the death was followed by disputes over the inheritance. Jan's bankruptcy of 1689 may have been a result of one of the lawsuits.
Rae Iso
Melbourn 1860-Brighton 1940