Premiere Caresses (1866)

William Bouguereau: Premiere Caresses

The present work clearly shows the influence of Raphäel, whom Bouguereau revered.  With his paintings owing as much to the sacred as to the profane, Bouguereau's choice of the simple and innocent lives of Roman peasants as his subjects eloquently served his artistic aims.  In Premières Caresses, the parallels between mother and baby and the Virgin and Child are unmistakable. The painting also bears witness to the family values Bouguereau held dear.

Marc de Montifaud in his review of the 1866 Salon wrote of the master composition, "Nothing could be more seductive, more supple, more correct than the fluent lines of Premières Caresses, in which the eyelids of the young woman, so warm in tone and character, have an irresistible softness directed at the naked plump child who has just been lifted from his cradle; his flesh has the qualities of a sculpture, displays a harmony of tonalities, is soft as worked clay, and has a roundness that has nowhere been better observed." [Sotheby’s]