William Adolphe Bouguereau

[Will Williams]

One of our Alliance members is a big fan of Bouguereau. So, when I attended a big estate sale here in Mountain City last weekend, hoping to score a bedroom suite for one of our staff (which I did), the first item snagged was an exquisitely framed print of what I thought was a Bouguereau.

When I got home and researched it I couldn't find it among his other paintings.



Does any one know who painted this?

Romanticism, the period Mr. Bouguereau was painting in, was a White thing. He's not included in the group of Romantic painters listed here, but could have been: https://learnodo-newtonic.com/famous-ro ... m-painters

[Will Williams]

One of our Alliance members is a big fan of Bouguereau...

Does anyone know who painted this?

I'd sent the photo I took of this print, above, to my friend, the Bouguereau fan. He just called and told me that it's not a Bouguereau but was painted by a student of his, Cot. I thought it was a Bouguereau because I'd seen this hanging on one of his walls and assumed that it was. The one I have is heavily matted and obscures where Cot signed it in the lower left that can be seen in the original, below.


The Storm
Pierre-Auguste Cot
French
1880
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 827

When Cot exhibited this painting at the Salon of 1880, critics speculated about the source of the subject. Some proposed the French novel Paul and Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), in which the teenage protagonists run for shelter in a rainstorm, using the heroine’s overskirt as an impromptu umbrella; others suggested the romance Daphnis and Chloe by the ancient Greek writer Longus. New York collector and Metropolitan Museum benefactor Catharine Lorillard Wolfe commissioned the work under the guidance of her cousin John Wolfe, one of Cot's principal patrons. Like the artist’s earlier Springtime (2012.575), it was immensely popular and extensively reproduced.



https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435997


Springtime
Pierre-Auguste Cot
French
1873
Not on view

This flirtatious duo in classicizing dress, painted with notable technical finesse, reflects Cot’s allegiance to the academic style of his teachers, including Bouguereau and Cabanel. Exhibited at the Salon of 1873, the picture was Cot’s greatest success, widely admired and copied in engravings, fans, porcelains, and tapestries. Its first owner, hardware tycoon John Wolfe, awarded the work a prime spot in his Manhattan mansion, where visitors delighted in "this reveling pair of children, drunken with first love ... this Arcadian idyll, peppered with French spice." Wolfe’s cousin, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, later commissioned a similar scene from Cot, The Storm, now also in The Met’s collection (87.15.134).