William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France. Hewas a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and had a long,successful career as an academic painter.
He was exhibiting his realistic genre paintings and mythologicalthemes in the annual exhibitions of the Paris Salons for more than50 years, for his entire working life. He won the Prix de Rome in1850.
Bouguereau painted eight hundred and twenty-six paintings in hislifetime. Considering his consummate level of skill and craft, andthe fact that the great preponderance of his works is life-size, itis one of the largest bodies of work ever produced by any artist.Add to that the fact that fully half of these paintings are greatmasterpieces, and we have the picture of an artist who belongs likeMichelangelo, Rembrandt and Caravaggio, in the top ranks of only ahandful of masters in the entire history of western art.Bouguereau''''s works were eagerly bought, at high prices,especially by American millionaires.
In his own time, Bouguereau was considered to be one of thegreatest painters in the world. In 1900, his contemporaries Degasand Monet reportedly named him as most likely to be remembered asone of the greatest 19th-century painter. He was excellent painterof the human figure and his figures come to life capturing thetender and subtlest nuances of personality and mood. Bouguereaucaught the very souls and spirits of his subjects much likeRembrandt who is said to have captured the soul of age.
His fate was to be much like that of Rembrandt, whose work was alsoridiculed and banished from museums and official art circles forthe hundred years following his death. Rembrandt''''s reputationwasn''''t resuscitated until the 1790''''s (he died in 1669).
His paintings of religious, mythological, and genre subjects werecarefully composed and painstakingly finished. Thus he opposed theadmission of works by the impressionists to the Salon, because hebelieved that their paintings were no more than unfinishedsketches. He fell into disregard in the early 20th century and hisreputation and accomplishments have undergone a dishonest andrelentless assault. His name and his work were degraded.
After a period of neglect following his death, Bouguereau''''spaintings were returned to view as part of a renewed interest inand reappraisal of academic painting and of Ecole des Beaux-Artsworks in general. Today, over one hundred museums throughout theworld exhibit his works.
Near the end of his life he described his love of his art: “Eachday I go to my studio full of joy; in the evening when obliged tostop because of darkness I can scarcely wait for the next morningto come…if I cannot give myself to my dear painting I ammiserable”. He painted 826 paintings.In the spring of 1905,Bouguereau''''s house and studio in Paris were burgled. On August19, 1905, Bouguereau died in La Rochelle at the age of 79 fromheart disease.

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