William Bouguereau: Tobias Bids Farewell to his Father
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was the 19th century Academic painter par excellence. In his own time, Bouguereau was considered to be one of the greatest painters in the world by the academic art community, and simultaneously he was reviled by the avant-garde. To many, he epitomized taste and refinement, and a respect for tradition. To others, he was a competent technician stuck in the past.
Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects, both pagan and Christian, with a concentration on the naked female human body. The idealized world of his paintings brought to life goddesses, nymphs, bathers, shepherdesses, and madonnas in a way that appealed to wealthy art patrons of the era. [Wikipedia]
The Art Renewal Center is a major exponent of Bouguereau and his style; they have a rather hagiographic bio of him.
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